19 January email<\/a> addressed to Duduzane, the month before the alleged meeting with his father, Geoghegan begins: \u201cIt was a great pleasure to meet you in Johannesburg over the last couple of days – many thanks for sparing us so much time.\u201d<\/p>\nHer email contains a briefing note outlining an initial project and the \u00a3100,000-a-month fee, excluding costs such as travel and accommodation.<\/p>\n
The correspondence between the two sheds light on an attempt to appropriate the rhetoric of \u2018economic emancipation\u2019 and turn it into a clear, consistently repeated political message to advance the interests of the firm\u2019s clients.<\/p>\n
In an enthusiastic reply to Geoghegen, Duduzane requests assistance \u201cwhether it be in the designing and creating a hard hitting message along the lines of the #EconomicEmancipation or whatever it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
He then forwards the email conversation to Gupta brother Tony.<\/p>\n
In the months after the contract with Bell Pottinger was signed, as Zuma and the Guptas faced increasing public scrutiny, an apparent online campaign gained momentum.<\/p>\n
According to the report and numerous articles, an army of fake twitter bots was mobilised to turn public opinion against critics of the Guptas and those perceived to be hostile to their interests, such as then Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and his deputy at the time, Mcebisi Jonas, and former Public Protector Thuli Madonsela.<\/p>\n
AmaBhungane has reported that numerous Gupta-aligned websites sprung up at around the same time. Their routine attacks on critics of the family and the Zuma faction as \u2018agents of white monopoly capital\u2019 were amplified by the twitter bots.<\/p>\n
Several of the websites were also traced to a Gupta employee.<\/p>\n
A key figure in this online community is Andile Mngxitama, whose organisation Black First, Land First (BLF) has repeatedly come to the defence of Zuma and the Guptas.<\/p>\n
The Bell Pottinger report specifically fingered BLF as a foundation that the firm backed in its Gupta PR campaign \u2013 a claim denied by Mngxitama at the time.<\/p>\n
But it has now emerged in leaked emails from February 16 that Mngxitama went cap in hand to Oakbay\u2019s Howa.<\/p>\n
An email from Mngxitama to Howa refers to an earlier meeting between the two. Later that evening Howa writes to Atul Gupta saying \u201cI met with this fellow. He wrote a good piece about us in the Sunday Indy this past weekend. He wants funding for his organisation. I explained that as business people, we have taken conscious decision to stay out of politics.\u201d<\/p>\n
Atul then forwards the email to Tony Gupta without a response.<\/p>\n
*Listen to Micah Reddy discuss the Bell Pottinger story with 702’s Stephen Grootes. <\/strong><\/p>\nIt is unclear what the final outcome was but the BLF continue to be among the most devoted Gupta supporters, recently mobilising a counter-demonstration against anti-Zuma protesters outside the Guptas\u2019 Saxonwold residence.<\/p>\n
According to the report, a former Bell Pottinger partner claimed that the social media campaign was ultimately a failure.<\/p>\n
Indeed the Gupta campaign caused major rifts within Bell Pottinger after other major clients – Investec and Richmont, of which billionaire Johann Rupert is chair – cut ties with the firm, reportedly because of its work with the Guptas and the targeting of Rupert as a symbol of \u2018white monopoly capital\u2019.<\/p>\n
According to one former Bell Pottinger source, Geoghegan tried to \u201cpull the Gupta account her way\u201d and was determined not to let go of the Gupta campaign despite others wanting to can it.<\/p>\n
This eventually led to a number of senior members splitting to form a new company.<\/p>\n
In April of this year, in the face of growing public criticism, Bell Pottinger announced it was terminating its work with the Guptas.<\/p>\n
\n- The story was updated after publication to include the BBC-Newsnight clip and the 702 radio interview.<\/strong><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Emails support claims in earlier leaked report that Bell Pottinger tried to portray the Gupta and Zuma families as victims of a racist backlash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22322,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}