Weapons of mass deception

When news of the murder began to emerge, Malta reacted with shock and disbelief. On 16 October 2017, Daphne Caruana Galizia was driving close to her home in Bidnija, when a car bomb placed in her leased Peugeot 108 exploded, killing her instantly. Her son Matthew would later come upon the scene of his mother’s mortal remains scattered about 80 metres away from the blast site.

Caruana Galizia, assassinated with a car bomb on 16 October 2017 in Malta

The last time he’d seen his mother alive, she was going to the bank. A government minister had gotten the courts to freeze her bank accounts. She intended to fight back. At the time of her murder, she was investigating two companies named in the Panama Papers – a leak of millions of records that exposed corruption in offshore finance.

Caruana Galizia was an investigative reporter, exposing the most powerful figures in the EU’s smallest member state.

Thousands read her blog, Running Commentary, in the island nation of fewer than half a million people, sandwiched between Libya and Italy. Her blog’s final words read: “There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.”

The violence was a natural progression from the harassment and intimidation Caruana Galizia had been subjected to when her blog began to garner a higher readership than all of Malta’s newspapers put together.

The violence was a natural progression from the harassment and intimidation Caruana Galizia had been subjected to when her blog began to garner a higher readership than all of Malta’s newspapers put together.

One can’t help but draw parallels between Malta and South Africa. At this point, the violence is still limited to sock-puppet accounts and abusive language online, but it warrants watching. Nothing happens in an instant like an explosion. Things grow in increments. Today it’s calling Scorpio’s Pauli van Wyk a jealous witch and/or racist, or claiming Sabelo Skiti and Thanduxolo Jika are house negroes — among other charming appellations — or manhandling Nobesuthu Hejana during a live crossing. Tomorrow, it may be something far more shocking.

It was in October 2018 that the Mail & Guardian reported on screenshots of text messages purporting to be a conversation between Floyd Shivambu and a businessperson with questionable links to the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), suggesting a direct link between the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) deputy president and his brother Brian’s business.

At the time, Skiti and Jika were accused of having all manner of agendas against the EFF and its deputy. Accusations of paid media, being Rupert’s lackeys — Johann not Murdoch — and fake news abounded.

In a statement the day after the report dropped, the red berets’ second-in-command began by saying, “I see weapons of mass deception and propaganda machines hard at work to mislead our people with their fake news.”

The reports of a link between him and VBS bank are “disingenuous and patently weak”, he claimed. Shivambu added that the collapse of the bank was because of fraud and looting plus regulatory failures of the South African Reserve Bank.

According to Shivambu “faceless sources” from the SARB, who have ulterior motives, had misled the media.

“I have no dealings with VBS and any attempt to link the EFF to the bank for cheap political points is a clear sign of desperation and soon enough people will see through it. The so-called well-placed sources in the SARB is a coward and a liar who misled journalists and can’t even reveal their identity [sic].”

On Monday, the Daily Maverick vindicated the M&G’s reports. The younger Shivambu’s attorneys insisted on a secrecy clause before their client signed an “acknowledgement of debt” for R4.55-million in favour of Vele Investments, the majority shareholder in VBS Mutual Bank, during Vele’s insolvency probe, Van Wyk reports.

In addition to other companies, Vele and VBS, under the guidance of bank chairman Tshifhiwa Matodzi, came together with the goal of fleecing the bank’s depositors and laundering proceeds to participants in the scam, which amounted to about R2.7-billion. Victims of the bank’s collapse included rural widows and orphaned children.

In the acknowledgement-of-debt contract, signed on 23 March 2020, Shivambu admits that “there is no underlying basis for the payment of R4 550 000 and accordingly the amount of R4 550 000 must be repaid to Vele Investments”.

Shivambu admits to having received millions of rands for doing nothing basically.

His acknowledgement of debt completely torpedoes years of denial that part of the VBS monies also funded the EFF.

For now, the attacks are limited to social media and threats of lawfare that, for obvious reasons, will never make it before the courts. But we shouldn’t be surprised by how easily the impressionable and gullible can make good on instigation for the sake of their leaders.

In March a chorus of innocent pleas from those accused of the R2.3-billion looting of VBS Mutual Bank rang, as the state asserted its readiness for trial. At the Johannesburg specialised commercial crimes court, sitting in Palm Ridge, prosecutor Hein van der Merwe said the state had “a very strong case” and had finalised its probe in this leg of the VBS investigation.

The trial date will be set for 2 August. Fourteen accused are expected to face 188 counts of corruption, fraud, money laundering and racketeering.

The temptation to say the harassment of journalists would never be taken to such levels here is great and foolish. In 2019, Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat finally bowed to popular pressure and announced his plans to resign. One of three men accused of carrying out Caruana Galizia’s murder has been sentenced to 15 years in prison. His alleged accomplices have pleaded not guilty. A fourth man has been charged with organising and financing the murder.

Kiri Rupiah and Luke Feltham of the Mail & Guardian