🔒 WORLDVIEW: Pondering big what ifs…SA’s lucky escape from media dark arts

We’re not yet half way through it, but there is no doubt 2017 will be expensive London PR consultancy Bell Pottinger’s annus horribilis. The agency which made a fortune peddling the US-line to Iraqis has been tripped up by getting involved with the crony capitalist Gupta family – and the kickback from an angry nation on the Southern tip of Africa.

It’s pleasant for many to reflect on the troubles of these experts in media’s dark arts, but as our Biznews colleague Quentin Wray asks today, what if they had been able to get away with it? As we often do, he draws inspiration for today’s contribution from an excellent book now on my Christmas gift list (“to self” of course).

Quentin writes: “In the fascinating, albeit Euro- and US-centric book edited by historian Robert Cowley entitled “What if? Military Historians imagine what might have been”*, we are taken through to a world where Alexander the Great died before conquering the known world, the Spanish armada defeated the English, the US lost their war of independence, Winston Churchill didn’t survive being hit by a taxi, and D-Day was a failure.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about a set of South African what ifs.

What if Thuli Madonsela had done what so many expected her to do when she got the job of Public Protector and failed to stand up to the government, closing the door on us knowing the true extent of state capture?

What if a few brave politicians hadn’t stood their ground in the face of a total onslaught from the Guptas and their henchmen and spoken out about what they had experienced?

And what if the person who leaked the treasure trove of incriminating emails had erred on the side of caution and not done so? Where would we be then? Would our ignorance be bliss? Or would we still know what was going on but not have the evidence to act on it, letting the looting continue unabated?

We cannot know, of course. But I shudder to think of what might have been.

One of the things we don’t have to wonder about is what if Bell Pottinger, those pedlars of toxic politics and hate, got caught. One of the very few things that has pleased me over the course of the state capture revelations is how badly the PR behemoth is handing its own crisis.

I am thoroughly enjoying watching a firm that bills itself as “a leading integrated, international reputation management agency” and which prides itself on its management of social and search, being forced to temporarily shut down its Twitter feeds in the wake of an endless onslaught of South African opprobrium.

On Wednesday (5 July) its top three hits on Google were “DA fires starting gun on UK investigations into Bell Pottinger for ‘inciting civil war’”, “Bell Pottinger probed for stoking racial tension in SA”, and “Analysis: Bell Pottinger – more than just spin, it’s political interference in sovereign states”. This is gold.

A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client, the maxim goes. The same applies to public relations. Bell Pottinger should be shopping around for help – but who will touch them now?”

Indeed Quentin – and for the same matter, which purveyor of the dark media arts would touch the Guptas today? Reminds us of the old adage about being judged by the company we keep. In business, that’s literal. – Alec Hogg

* Available on Amazon