STEVEN FRIEDMAN: Voters are unlikely to buy into smearing games before elections

Luckily for citizens here, one of politicians’ favourite, and most dangerous, games is not working for those who play it.

Political smears are again in season, partly because an election is approaching. The current crop includes Mosiuoa Lekota’s claim that President Cyril Ramaphosa betrayed activists to the apartheid police, and whispers that Eskom is being unbundled because Ramaphosa and energy minister Jeff Radebe want to benefit their brother-in-law, Patrice Motsepe. (We don’t yet know whether claims that ANC spokespeople Pule Mabe and Zizi Kodwa abused women are political smears or the truth).

These are not isolated incidents — smears are regularly used here to try to achieve political goals. Politicians are usually the targets, but not always: former national director of public prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka was accused of being an apartheid spy, while senior SA Revenue Service (Sars) officials are still fending off allegations that they were running a “rogue unit”. Former public protector Thuli Madonsela was accused of working for the CIA.

These claims (with the exception of Mabe and Kodwa’s cases, in which the jury is still out) are backed by no credible evidence and are designed to damage political opponents or officials who stand in the way of people who are usually up to no good.

In principle, the politics of spreading claims about opponents is a problem for democracy because it encourages people to distrust all public figures. It is also often difficult for people who are smeared to clear their names entirely. It is impossible to prove, for example, that you were not a spy, which is why these claims are a particularly nasty form of smear.

But there is little to suggest that smears really do influence public opinion here. Lekota’s outburst has done far more to discredit him than Ramaphosa, and the claims about Ramaphosa and Radebe are believed only by people who were already hostile to them. Claims about Ramaphosa’s private life did not prevent him from winning the ANC presidency, and claims about former president Kgalema Motlanthe’s private life died a quick and deserved death when it became clear that they were motivated only by political malice.

It seems unlikely this set of smears will influence voters’ choices in the May general election. This suggests that new smears — which are probably inevitable in the current political climate — will not sway the electorate either.

On the surface, smearing officials rather than politicians seems to have done more damage. A commission of inquiry was required to clear Ngcuka, while the Sars officials lost their jobs and still face harassment. But in both cases this was not because people believed the smear. Ngcuka was fingered because he was seen to be doing what former president Thabo Mbeki wanted him to do. Mbeki appointed the commission to force those who made the claims to produce evidence, which they could not do.

The Sars officials suffered their ordeals because it suited people in the government to use the smear as an excuse to remove and harass them, not because they persuaded anyone who was not already on the same side as the people doing the smearing. The Madonsela claims were greeted with ridicule by everyone except those who invented them.

Given all this, smears seem to be far less effective than those who come up with them hope. At most, they are believed by people whose loyalties prompt them to think the worst of anyone “on the other side” and so they strengthen the views people already hold, rather than getting them to change their minds.

This reality is unlikely to cure those who spread smears out of habit. But it is a plus for democracy and the quality of public life here that smearing opponents is not a winning game.

• Friedman is research professor with the humanities faculty of the University of Johannesburg.