Journalist fights back against 'abusive' EFF

The media, and the victim of the latest assault on media freedom, journalist Karima Brown, are fighting back after EFF leader Julius Malema sparked an outpouring of abuse and ugly threats against Brown from his supporters, notes Legalbrief. Brown said she would lay complaints with the police and the Electoral Commission (IEC) against the EFF. ‘I am going to lay an official complaint at the IEC. And the police,’ Brown is quoted as saying in a report on the IoL site. She suggested the EFF was in breach of the Electoral Code of Conduct, enshrined in the Electoral Act, which barred registered parties from using language that could provoke violence and enjoined them to respect the role of the media before, during and after elections. ‘We need to ask the IEC how such a party can be on the ballot box. It threatens journalists. It encourages its supporters to make rape threats and sexual assault threats. It wants to dictate what I can do as a journalist,’ she said. Parties who breach the code risk having their registration for the elections revoked, notes the report. The spectre of the EFF being barred for the polls was raised by media freedom activists last year when Malema launched sustained attacks on journalists, among them Brown, News24 editor Adriaan Basson and Tiso Blackstar reporter Ranjeni Munusamy. The latest attack on Brown began when Malema took to Twitter to accuse her of sending ‘moles’ to a campaign meeting the EFF was holding with ‘elders’ in Erkuhuleni's Ward 6. Brown had tried to post a brief of the event to colleagues at eNCA, where she hosts a weekly show on politics, but mistakenly sent it to the EFF's WhatsApp group. In retaliation, Malema published Brown's mobile phone number, which led to EFF supporters unleashing a stream of vitriol, including racial attacks and threats of rape. ‘We are not playing here. We are dealing with racists... step aside or we will crush your prolapsed vagina,’ read one, which was accompanied by laughing emojis. Another called her an ‘Indian whore’.

The SA National Editors Forum (Sanef) demanded an apology, but EFF spokesperson Mbuyiseni Ndlozi issued a statement branding Brown an ‘ANC operative’. ‘The EFF has long held a position that Karima Brown is not a journalist, but an openly admitted ANC operative. All journalists who hold legitimate positions, and whose integrity has always been consistent with journalistic ethics, should care about what role Karima Brown plays in the media,’ he is quoted as saying in the IoL report. Brown said the EFF was harassing women in general and seeking to dictate for whom she worked as a journalist and how she went about her work. It's conduct carried overtones of fascism, she added. ‘How do they live up to the Bill of Rights? That is my question. Today it is me. Tomorrow it is person X. This is how fascism starts,’ she added. Sanef said the latest attacks on Brown were part of a wider assault on media freedom and called on Malema to desist. It said Brown's message was simply a standard newsroom alert to colleagues, asking them to keep a watching brief on an event.

Full IoL report

The fight-back is bolstered in a series of articles under what is labelled ‘The EFF's Republic of Impunity’ on the Daily Maverick site. Writer Ferial Haffajee notes not one of a suite of criminal cases laid against the EFF and its supporters for violence against journalists and others has got out of the starting blocks, suggesting that the party enjoys virtual impunity. She says seven cases laid against the EFF in its year of violence, 2018, that is leeching into 2019, are now virtual cold cases, according to research by the Daily Maverick. Haffejee points out that a year ago, Netwerk24 photojournalist André de Kock was beaten up by EFF deputy president Floyd Shivambu and, while an investigating officer was assigned to the case, he has not been called to provide a statement on a case that has stalled. A month ago, EFF MP Marshall Dlamini smacked warrant officer Johan Carstens after the State of the Nation Address – by Wednesday, there was no progress on the investigation, despite video footage showing what had happened. SAPS spokesperson Brigadier Vishnu Naidoo said the video evidence in both EFF-related incidents was not admissible, but he would not explain why video evidence on social media was admissible in the arrest of musician-producer Mampintsha (Mandla Maphumulo) who was filmed beating up musician Babes Wodumo. ‘The investigation is still in progress. The comments by the investigation team is that they will not investigate these cases through the media and that these cases are receiving the desired attention,’ said Naidoo, who earlier reportedly told the DM that witness statements in both cases were also still outstanding. ‘When one considers how swiftly the SAPS moved to effect the arrest of Mampintsha, it does raise questions as to why no action has been taken against EFF leaders who have similarly flouted the law. Similar video evidence went viral on social media yet SAPS acted against Mampintsha but not against Shivambu and Dlamini. It may not constitute impunity but it does contribute towards undermining the rule of law,’ said Lawson Naidoo, executive secretary of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution.

Full Daily Maverick report

The EFF leadership and supporter base have become the country’s leading army of cyber-violence, Haffajee notes in the second of the Daily Maverick articles. She says Sanef has approached the Equality Court to interdict Malema and his party from intimidating, harassing, threatening or assaulting five named journalists and any other journalist. The case is likely to be heard in March. For years, the EFF has used social media and its rallies to execute a campaign of violence and hate speech against journalists whose reporting it does not approve of, writes Haffajee. Now Sanef will ask the courts to interdict the EFF from publishing personal information about journalists online; and it will ask the courts to direct Malema and the EFF to ‘publicly denounce the harassment and abuse of five named journalists and to call upon members and supporters of the first respondent to cease intimidating, harassing, threatening and/or assaulting any journalist, or publishing the information of any journalist’. This is the first big test case in SA to challenge cyber-violence, which is now recognised by the UN agency Unesco as a rising threat to media freedom. The five journalists are Tiso Blackstar associate editor Ranjeni Munusamy; Daily Maverick and Scorpio investigative journalist Pauli van Wyk, News24 Editor-in-Chief Adriaan Basson, Vrye Weekblad editor Max du Preez and EWN reporter Barry Bateman. The journalists were warned by the EFF and its supporters that their conduct (that is, their journalism) was a declaration of war; that supporters of the respondents were ‘coming for’ them, while some were warned that it was ‘time to deal with’ their types of journalists.

Full Daily Maverick report

Malema understands the information wars, says the third in the suite of Daily Maverick articles. Haffajee notes that in Sanef’s court papers, Malema is quoted as saying on a podium in November 2018: ‘Let’s attack, fighters. Let’s occupy every street, every house; every space in society. Let us not leave the enemy to chance. Where we meet the enemy, we must crush the enemy. On Facebook, Twitter, social media, be there, guard the revolution. When the enemy raises its ugly head, don’t hit the head, cut the head. No time to entertain enemies of the revolution. We must protect the revolution at all costs.’ In the statement, Malema for the first time locates social media as a battleground of an enemy to be crushed. Haffajee points out that Samantha Bradshaw and Philip N Howard, in the 2017 study called ‘Troops, Trolls and Troublemakers: A Global inventory of organised social media manipulation' for Oxford University, say: ’Cyber troops are government, military or political party teams committed to manipulating public opinion over social media.’ All political parties in SA have cyber troops as political information now hurtles on the Internet unmediated by the mass media and the competition to own how your narrative is told. The official opposition and the ANC all deploy cyber operations (or digital war-rooms) and have increased these in the election year. The EFF has the most militant and organised cyber army, but the official opposition DA’s cyber-troops are digital bulldogs, too, as are parts of the ANC.

Full Daily Maverick report