{"id":152287,"date":"2017-01-24T09:03:56","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T07:03:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=152287"},"modified":"2017-01-24T09:03:56","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T07:03:56","slug":"ancs-secret-r50-million-election-smear-campaign-exposed-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/152287\/ancs-secret-r50-million-election-smear-campaign-exposed-report\/","title":{"rendered":"ANC’s secret R50 million election smear campaign exposed: report"},"content":{"rendered":"

Investigative reporters at amaBhungane<\/a><\/strong> have revealed insider information relating to an alleged R50 million smear campaign the ANC tried – and failed – to run in the lead up to the 2016 municipal elections.<\/p>\n

The information was released as part of a court bid by one of the people involved in the alleged campaign, detailing how the ANC hired a covert team to operate in what it called “The War Room”, which was specifically tasked with discrediting opposition parties, and pushing pro-ANC propaganda.<\/p>\n

The specific requirements were that the War Room would have no links to Luthuli House, and would establish a publication (The New South African) and talk shows featuring stories of ANC successes, while using so-called ‘influencers’ online to shift public discourse, amaBhunagane reported.<\/p>\n

The campaign also reportedly involved producing fake posters to mimic opposition parties’ campaigns to “disempower” them.<\/p>\n

The revelations come from a case that was brought against the ANC by public relations expert Sihle Bolani, who claims she is owed R2.2 million for work done as part of the campaign.<\/p>\n

According to various correspondence seen by amaBhungane – provided as evidence in the court application as well as by Bolani herself – the War Room was supposed to raise R50 million from various sources to do its job.<\/p>\n

However, promised money never materialised or was spent elsewhere (like on t-shirts) and invoices for work done were left unpaid.<\/p>\n

Bolani’s court bid claims that the ANC had agreed to pay her R100,000 a month to settle the debt, but she turned it down. When approached for comment, the party told amaBhungane that no such “War Room” ever existed.<\/p>\n

The investigative group said this response was contradicted, as it had seen correspondence between the ANC and the PR team at Ogilvy & Mather (the company who helped the ANC with its public relations during the 2016 elections) making specific mention of the War Room, and the party’s involvement.<\/p>\n

You can read the full detailed report at amaBhungane<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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Read:\u00a0Zuma says no thanks to ANC lifestyle audits<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Investigative reporters at amaBhungane have revealed insider information relating to an alleged R50 million smear campaign the ANC tried – and failed – to run in the lead up to the 2016 municipal elections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":119609,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-152287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152287"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152295,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152287\/revisions\/152295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}