If you pay attention to the South African media landscape, you’ll know that anything Iqbal Survé touches soon sours.

He’s also very, very touchy about being criticised by the likes of the Daily Maverick, who aren’t afraid to cut through the noise and call him out for what he really is.

For those playing catch-up, Survé owns Sekunjalo Independent Media, which produces a number of newspapers, as well as the online site IOL.

It’s a commonly-established premise that Survé has been meddling with the electoral independence of these media outlets for years. He’s also been called out for manipulating the stock price of Ayo Technology Solutions, through two other companies that he owns, Sekunjalo Investment Holdings and 3 Laws Capital.

That’s important, because Survé is also indirectly Ayo’s biggest shareholder by far.

Without going too deep into the Daily Maverick’s exposé of his ‘suspicious’ trading and market manipulation, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) is investigating Survé’s trading.

For those details, read this Daily Maverick article. When you’re done there, go ahead and read this one, too.

Let’s skip ahead to something less technical, but just as damning – Survé’s “campaign of lies”, which the Daily Maverick’s Ferial Haffajee compares to the actions of Bell Pottinger.

Off we go:

With failing newspaper titles, most held aloft by copies given away or sold below cost, people who are attacked write his war off as one fought with dummy bullets. But with the portal www.iol.co.za still one of the largest in the country, the disinformation disrupts truth and can harm the reform of South Africa after the decade of State Capture.

There is little left in Survé’s Sekunjalo Independent Media by way of content. Day after day, both the front pages of his titles and the business title Business Report are weaponised to fight his battles. Without the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), which has funded his media and IT companies, Survé would not have been able to expand his businesses. But as the liquidation notice served by the PIC on the media part of his business has shown, and the details of a Financial Sector Conduct Authority investigation into share manipulation reveal, he is at the end of days…

Now under serious investigation, Survé has turned his mass media on the PIC and an assortment of enemies. Alongside this, he has turned his media to boosterism and puffery as he veils his disassembling empire in grandiose announcements.

This week, for example, Business Report splashed on its front page an unlikely story of Survé starting a global blockchain company, through his holding company Sekunjalo.

This “Africa-wide blockchain-enabled business ecosystem, the African Chain 3.0”, is supposed to be the next big thing in blockchain, he would have you believe.

Like the boy who cried wolf, though, Survé’s media outlets have often talked up his endeavours, only to see them crash and burn in spectacular fashion:

His previous boondoggles were Ayo Technology and Sagarmatha, which he proclaimed would be “African unicorns” (technically, companies valued at $1-billion) and which he valued at an initial R12-billion. In 2015, his titles trumpeted the launch of the African News Agency (ANA) seeded with a claimed initial investment of $200-million with investor Ladislas Agbesi.

Four years later and despite the highest apparent capitalisation of a media company in South Africa and Africa yet, the Daily Maverick reported that ANA served retrenchment notices on its 25 journalists this month. In other words, ANA was another of Survé’s business mirages.

Haffajee then goes on to outline how IOL’s journalists took aim at her, following an article she wrote a book skewering Survé called Paper Tiger.

You can buy it here, and it would be a tragedy if it sold many, many copies.

After outlining the various techniques used by his journalists to attack and obscure the truth (or downright avoid it), she finishes with a lesson in why it’s so important to fight back, even though the playing field is far from level:

It’s been a difficult few days trying to deal with Survé’s anti-truth machine. While most colleagues make light of his machinations and the weaponisation of his media, it hits home and people notice ..

The media magnate pulled his titles and online platforms out of the Press Council’s system of co-independent regulation so there is no recourse to a fix. Survé exercises power without responsibility. Yes, one can go to court. But there’s an opening price of R100,000 on a defamation suit and it’s unaffordable for the targets of Survé’s war.

I have access to this platform to expose the disinformation machine and Survé’s war on truth for what they are, but what about the other people he has targeted?

It has made me realise that you can’t simply write him off as the doctor gone mad, the dictator disassembling as his ephemeral and corrupt business empire turns to sand around him, like Ozymandias’s statue.

Survé requires as much attention as the Gupta family patronage received — like them, he has looted the public purse (the retirement funds of government employees) and like them, he has engaged a massive disinformation campaign as a cover for that.

Again, many South Africans have been left wondering what exactly it will take to see any form of legal retribution handed down.

We know how slowly those wheels turn, but there’s no time like the present. Then again, the NPA and the Hawks have quite a backlog to get through, having ignored everything that went on whilst Shaun Abrahams ruled the roost.

In the meantime, just remember that Survé is waging a massive misinformation campaign, so don’t be duped by what you’re reading on certain sites and in certain newspapers.

Again, Paper Tiger can be bought here, for those who want to really understand how deep the rot goes.

[sources:dailymaverick&dailymaverick]