The South African National Editors' Forum (SANEF) logo.
Image: File Picture
The name of the professional body of South African newspaper editors, the South African National Editors Forum (SANEF), is misleading.
It gives the impression that this is a forum for all South African editors in the media space. That is just not true. It is a private club of a minority of editors, mainly liberal. Most editors in South Africa fall within the stable of IOL and Independent Media, which is not part of SANEF. So the impression that the grandiose name conjures is at odds with the banal nature of this thing really is — a Cheese and Wine and Whine gathering for some editors to gossip about people who aren’t in the room.
So what does SANEF actually do? They aren’t an institution that arbitrates or resolves disputes, like the Press Council. Now and then they will issue a statement decrying some real or perceived abuse against media workers (mainly the ones in their special club).
On occasion SANEF will host talk shops and training sessions, mainly aimed at identifying and reducing misinformation and disinformation. Everybody can get behind that. They do so in collaboration with, among others, Chris Roper’s Code4Africa.
Roper is one of the former Mail & Guardian editors who have collaborated with NED-funded initiatives. Code4Africa is a member of Code for All, which is supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Additionally, Roper was a Knight Fellow at the International Center for Journalists, which is also funded by the NED.
I should pause here to mention that for the uninitiated, the NED is a US endowment established by an act of the US Congress to fund, facilitate, and amplify initiatives that extend US soft power. When the carrot of soft power doesn’t work, they do not shy away from having a hand on the stick of coups from Eastern Europe to Latin America. The NED is a bench player in upholding and extending US hegemony. They are a strange mix of a spook agency, consultancy, and blesser who can make it rain cash on projects it favours, and a punisher who can make it rain fire and brimstone on governments that it wants to overthrow. It’s often referred to as “the second CIA”.
"A lot of what we [the NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” said the organisation’s co-founder Allen Weinstein. So when you read “NED”, take it for granted that these are bad dudes.
I’ve written extensively on the NED, their history, who they fund, their history of soft coups, and their penchant for using pliant media houses as a front to extend soft power, which eventually translates into regime change via the ballot, and if needs be, by the bullet.
I’m not for one second saying that Chris Roper is a CIA asset. Nor am I saying that SANEF, in collaboration with Code4Africa, pursues an agenda of regime change. What I am saying is that these interests and collaborations should be disclosed. In much the same way that we can refer to the label to learn the contents of sodium and fat in the packet of crisps that we buy, we should also know the associations of SANEF’s collaborators and constituents.
SANEF, and other institutions that Code4Africa works with, including the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC), can now not claim to be unaware of Roper’s affiliations with an organisation that has executed soft and hard coups around the world.
Because of these associations with funders and influence networks, the arc of the narrative is generally geared towards keeping Russian and Chinese misinformation out of the South African infosphere. We should also keep US and Nato misinformation, disinformation and outright propaganda out of our discourse, and where it is found it should be corrected. Even, and especially when such lies are peddled by US diplomats and their proxies, and amplified, uninterrogated in these online liberal platforms.
And that’s where Code4Africa, SANEF, and people like Chris Roper are asleep at the wheel while going a hundred miles per hour.
If Roper, and others who posture as the great Pan-Africanists who protect the digital infosphere from red menaces were truly “4Africa” as the name of his organisation states, then he would understand that, to paraphrase a great Pan-Africanist, Africa should look neither east nor west for the curatorship of its media, but forward. Nor should it look exclusively to one front as a threat to the integrity of our institutions and the public discourse. Otherwise it just resembles tech evangelism where African newsrooms are colonised by what the Atlantic Council, Google and the NED say are best practices.
The reality is that disinformation and misinformation comes from all sources, not just from the geopolitical opponents of the US. It is said that a lie can go halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its shoes on. but SANEF, Code4Africa, and others have consistently hit the snooze button and slept in, conspicuous in their absence from lies that have put this country on its back.
A brief coda to this section on SANEF that is instructive as to the chilling effect of Anton Harber and others in their special club. I wrote about this previously.
Last year I was invited to Unfiltered with Dr Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh to talk about the media ecosystem and the penetration of US agendas into certain publications. On the panel was a representative from SANEF. I spoke at length about how embedded US state department interests were, and the role that some publications play in reinforcing this. One investigative media house was invited, but declined the invitation to appear. Instead they issued a statement which was intended to sweep this under the rug. Dr Mpofu-Walsh was, it seemed, prompted by producers at intervals to read this statement, which did not address in substance any of the points that I raised.
On this show, I also criticised the embedded nature of the Oppenheimer family’s Brenthurst Foundation, Greg Mills’ simultaneous ties to Brenthurst, Nato think tanks, and the Daily Maverick, and his past as a military advisor to the west’s illegal invasion and occupation of Afghanistan (more on this later in the series).
The clip of my critique went viral. Not long after that, SABC, which put full episodes of this show on Youtube, made this particular episode private, unviewable to a general audience. If you know anything about Youtube and the management of content, you would know such an intervention is not an accidental intervention. You have to go deep into the settings to make it so. It was an unprecedented intervention possibly due to external pressure, the nature of which is known to a select group of people involved in the show and the broadcaster.
At the top of the next episode, Dr Mpofu-Walsh was made to once again issue a statement that resembled a hostage video on behalf of the publication involved. It was as though he was coerced into becoming a spokesperson for people who had been invited on the show to account for themselves, but chose not to. Now that SABC has taken Unfiltered off the air, I have received accounts of what occurred behind the scenes. There are interests and individuals that are able to bend the editorial content of supposedly independent shows into a laager formation to defend uncomfortable truths about our mediascape. Fatwas are issues, threats are made, and the demonisation of those who bring to light what is made for darkness is executed.
To conclude, SANEF aren’t the bad guys. They are a professional club of people who represent a camembert slice of the fourth estate. Many of those who are constituents of SANEF echo these same thoughts, but only privately, and only on condition of anonymity. Generally speaking, SANEF is a net positive on our mediascape. But the agendas and biases that are inherent in how that body is composed, and how it has set out its stall to combat some misinformation and disinformation, creates bubbles of incoherence and hypocrisy that rise to the surface.
Next: Part three: The Oppenheimers' Brenthurst Foundation.
* Roscoe Palm is an investigative journalist, political analyst and commentator.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.
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