‘Web warriors’ hit PR firm Bell Pottinger

Give South Africans a common external enemy and we’ll band together to fight them … on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram and on e-mail.

That’s what the Guptas’ PR firm, Bell Pottinger, instigators of the “White Monopoly Capital” campaign, found out at their expense when they issued an apology this week to the people of South Africa.

Pottinger was excoriated yesterday after its chief executive, James Henderson, admitted on Thursday he had seen dismaying “interim evidence” of a “social media campaign around economic emancipation” that he considered “inappropriate and offensive”.

The war on Pottinger has mainly been fought on Twitter and, right at the start of it, attorney and social media activist Tumi Sole created the hashtag #CountryDuty.

“This hashtag really started when President Jacob Zuma wiped out about R20 billion from the fiscus after he dismissed finance minister Pravin Gordhan,” said Sole.

Zuma’s cloak and dagger midnight manoeuvres in March made Sole think more people should be aware of what was going on, especially about the so-called #GuptaLeaks, court cases and general information affecting South Africans in their everyday lives.

However, Sole said, paying tribute to the #CountryDuty Twitter warriors, it was a combination of #CountryDuty and #BellPottingerMustFall, where thousands of Twitter users targeted clients of Pottinger, that really had an effect, causing several of them to distance themselves from the PR firm.

Communication strategist Sarah Britten-Pillay said Bell Pottinger was forced to apologise once the #GuptaLeaks came out.

“I think if those mails had not come out, they would still have the Guptas as a client,” she said.

“They have inflamed racial tensions. I don’t think anyone who lives in South Africa, or in the land of Penny Sparrow and others, can pretend there were not racial issues before then, but they certainly inflamed them and they did it for one of the worst possible reasons, which was to distract from corruption.

“Bell Pottinger used communications to cover up crime and I think there should be severe consequences.”

Despite the volume of allegations and accusations in the e-mail trove, the SA Police Service and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) remain tightlipped over possible investigations into allegations of race-baiting, corruption and state capture in the unholy trinity between the politically connected Gupta family, government and Bell Pottinger.

The NPA said yesterday it doesn’t investigate crime, and the Hawks are believed to be only investigating the origin of the #GuptaLeaks e-mails, not the content.

The e-mails and admissions may not be enough to get anyone put in irons right away, but it should be enough to start investigating, Wits law professor advocate James Grant said yesterday.

“If I was the national director of public prosecutions, I would gather 200 of my people and tell them they were not going to see their families for two years while we clean government up.” – amandaw@citizen.co.za

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