EFF and Afriforum: the hard sell

In preparation for a project we were scoping out, a colleague and I were brainstorming some parameters around digital disinformation. One of the questions we pondered was how to identify the root causes of disinformation. In particular, what would we identify as the dominant cause for bottom-up disinformation, as opposed to disinformation coming from governments, corrupt business and self-serving ideological groups.

My answers — xenophobia, science scepticism, mischief — were piecemeal and platitudinous. Her answer was succinct and encompassing: disenfranchisement.

It’s true, of course. A huge amount of the misinformation, disinformation and malinformation we see in SA is a response to some sort of disenfranchisement, imagined or real. And this is especially true if we define the term loosely. In the strict meaning of the word, it’s being deprived of your right to vote. I think we can expand that a bit, to include being deprived of the knowledge that your act of voting actually means anything.

Governments, including ours, take their legitimacy from the notion that they are democratically elected. This relies on the idea that democracies are an expression of the will of the people, of a majority agreeing that their government deserves the power to govern.

We are fond of saying that this principle is "enshrined" in the Freedom Charter, though that is starting to look less like a statement of principle and more like the small print on a cellphone contract you can’t get out of.

Let’s remind ourselves of its ringing opening paragraph: "We, the people of SA, declare for all our country and the world to know: that SA belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people; that our people have been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty and peace by a form of government founded on injustice and inequality; that our country will never be prosperous or free until all our people live in brotherhood, enjoying equal rights and opportunities; that only a democratic state, based on the will of all the people, can secure to all their birthright without distinction of colour, race, sex or belief."

I’m not suggesting that we be overly cynical about the Freedom Charter, which still resounds with hope. But in the abyss that has opened between hope and delivery, there thrives a type of bottom-feeder who feeds off discontent. Which almost brings me to the topic of today’s sermon (the case of AfriForum vs Julius Malema, happening in the Joburg high court at the time of writing this column).

Almost, but not quite. Let’s delve into a sidebar about Plato first.

We’ve all trotted out the Churchillian aphorism about democracy being the least bad form of government. Unhappily, that turns out to be misinformation, which the experts over at First Draft News define as false content that the person sharing doesn’t realise is false or misleading.

What Winston Churchill actually said was: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, and that public opinion expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of ministers who are their servants and not their masters."

Not dramatically different, perhaps, except that he’s not actually the one calling it bad.

Recent events, though, have shown two things. One, that when he talked about "public opinion expressed by all constitutional means", Churchill had no idea how warped that notion would become in the social media age. And, second, there’s a fine line between democracy and what Plato called ochlocracy, or "mob rule". (And here I’m freely quoting from AC Grayling’s The Good State: On the Principles of Democracy.)

Plato thought democracy was a terrible way to give authority to a state, because of "the ignorance, self-interest, short-termism, prejudice, envy, and proneness to rivalry widespread among ‘the people’".

Grayling also quotes US satirist HL Mencken, "who said that to believe in democracy is to believe ‘that collective wisdom will emerge from individual ignorance’".

I know what you’re thinking, or rather what I hope you’re thinking. Of course the elite of a ruling class, among whom we count our home-grown state capture gang, will think that it’s a bad idea having the great unwashed interfere with the unfettered use of government as a money laundry. And it’s precisely the pushback on that which leaves us living in a democracy where we feel our vote means little to nothing. This feeling of disenfranchisement leaves us vulnerable to the charlatans making money off disinformation.

Dialogue between two such organisations can only be a biding of time until a weakness is spotted

—  What it means:

So, finally, we get to AfriForum vs Malema. A more toxic soup of grifters it would be hard to find.

In brief, AfriForum is asking the court to find the EFF leader in contempt of court for continuing to sing Kill the Boer, despite the ruling in 2010 that determined that the song was, in effect, a form of hate speech.

At that time, Malema took the fight to the Supreme Court of Appeal. The parties eventually reached a mediation settlement that there would be "dialogue among leaders and supporters to promote understanding of respective histories".

AfriForum is now arguing that the EFF reneged on this, and the organisation is demanding financial damages of R500,000, as well as a directive that the party correct its actions.

So much for dialogue between leaders and supporters.

It reminds me of the current "dialogue" between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the gaggle of European and US politicians trying to convince him to not invade Ukraine. In other words, dialogue between two organisations such as the EFF and AfriForum can only ever be a biding of time until a weakness is spotted.

One of the things that AfriForum, in the person of Ernst Roets — revolutionary hero and protector of minorities with credit cards — is complaining about is that Malema (and this is going to surprise you) is acting in bad faith.

News24 tells us that "AfriForum argued that Malema continued to break the terms of the mediation, in that, despite making changes to the word ‘kill’ and instead saying ‘kiss’ the boer, he still used the hand gesture of shooting while singing the song during party events".

In a fine illustration of what the EFF thinks of the citizens of our democracy (either that they’re all idiots, or that they find it amusing when proto-fascists tell bald lies), EFF MP Marshall Dlamini said: "[AfriForum] say it’s a hate speech case, for saying ‘kiss the boer’. How can saying kiss the boer be hate speech?"

And just to make the EFF’s unapologetic stance on using violence crystal clear, "responding to a Twitter post by Roets on February 4 flagging the upcoming hearing, [EFF MP Mbuyiseni] Ndlozi tweeted: ‘"Ziyasaba lezinja! Dubula Dubula! [These dogs are scared! Shoot Shoot!]’".

It’s all about using people’s feelings of disenfranchisement to make money, and not worrying about how obvious you are about it.

In a photo Roets shares of himself in front of the court in Joburg, he is clutching his book, Kill the Boer (suggested retail price R350), which makes the claim that the government is complicit in farm attacks. In another, his book is featured attached to a stack of legal documents.

Even his tales of freedom-fighting derring-do have product placements. "EFF protesters tried to prevent us from entering the court today. When we left, one barred the gate and then tried to steal a copy of my book and run away. The police had to physically pull him away. When we left, he screamed ‘Kill the boer!’ while making hand gestures toward us."

This is shameless grifting and, I would venture to say, symbolic of the ways AfriForum and the EFF take advantage of people’s anxieties and disenfranchisement.

The disenfranchisement is real, but the choices the EFF and AfriForum offer are not solutions, they’re sales gimmicks.