Propaganda against South Africa

A small analysis of a cartoon

One of the most memorable interviews I conducted in recent years was with Dr. Mark Crispin Miller, an underrated expert in propaganda analysis. When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, he wrote a piece—worth revisiting—on how to teach and analyze propaganda. He emphasized in his teaching that the most important propaganda to scrutinize is the one you might agree with.

I thought I would use the current fallout between South Africa and America as an opportunity to examine the messaging. As is usually the case in international disputes, the event is accompanied by a wave of propaganda and deceptive communication techniques that both parties involved engage in.

An example of this is a cartoon that a few disillusioned South Africans, all critical of the current government, recently sent me. I used a color-coded bar to analyze it.

As is usual, one notable aspect of propaganda is that fact and fiction are always intertwined.

The most effective propaganda is in fact “the truth”.

- Green: Facts: These are mostly fact, the ANCs race laws, anti-colonial rhetoric, calling people "comrade" on TV. South Africa currently has a series of laws aimed at “redressing inequalities”, and many of them (117 out of 317) were in fact enacted After Apartheid.

- Blue: Frankly issues that nobody could care less about. Several EU countries are socialist. The best places are both socialist and capitalist—Norway and Sweden notably. BRICS is overblown, and several BRICS nations trade with the USA. America has never cared if a country was socialist, whether it was authoritarian or not. The term “socialist” is used to exploit the latent red scare or “rooi-gevaar” propaganda that the National Party used to present itself as a bulwark against communism. The messaging was effective at the time, because it blocked political reform until the fall of the USSR.

- Red: These are just lies. The ANC has maintained an official policy of strategic ambiguity, which every Western diplomat I have engaged with recognizes. The party has never been explicitly pro-Iran, pro-China, pro-Russia, or even overtly pro-BRICS. This principle of being “neither east nor west” is taught in diplomatic schools in South Africa. The country values sovereignty, but the government is rather ineffective at conveying its intent to 'balance' between East and West. I would go as far as saying that the confusion is their strategy. The Pro Iranian story, was spread on SA media by news channels that are affiliated with the Israeli Lobby. When the issue broke out, I looked into its origins and it was obvious that it was a pure fabrication. To date nobody has presented any serious evidence of it.

- Pink: The real reason for the fallout—and ironically, the first principled and admirable thing the ANC has done in years. Whether we agree with them or not, the ANC is not alone in calling Israeli actions in Gaza as genocide - several states have already joined the ICJ court case. Furthermore, several international organisators such as Amnesty International, Medicine Sans Frontier, and Human Rights watch have all warned against the humanitarian disaster in Gaza and many of them outright use the term genocide. The ANC did not act on behalf of Iran; rather, it did so due to internal pressure from its members and influenced by legal experts such as Dr. Francis Boyle—a respected international law professor who represented Bosnia and Herzegovina in its genocide case against Serbia at the International Court of Justice.

Purple: This is true—as I wrote previously, the ANC has been scapegoating white South Africans. It refuses to recognize that part of the reason the diaspora is being weaponized is its own inaction in moving away from divisive policies. However, it is also true that Afrikaner organizations such as AfriForum benefit from this divisiveness, as their own leaders admit that their revenue increases every time figures like Malema make inflammatory statements.