OPINION

The Griekwastad AWB farm murder hoax

Gill Moodie on how rapidly a false claim can go viral in the age of Twitter

It was the most bizarre story of 2013: a right-wing female farmer awaiting trial for treason claimed from inside prison that she had been part of a hit squad that killed the Steenkamp family in Griekwastad the year before in an attempt to heighten fears among farmers about farm killings and to incite racial hatred.

The October interview with Cornelia de Wet, a member of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB), was a scoop for the Kimberley daily newspaper, the Diamond Fields Advertiser - and it quickly made it on to parent company Independent Newspapers' news portal, IOL. From there it took off across social media, particularly the fast-moving Twitter - and was tweeted not just by the likes of controversial Afrikaans singer Steve Hofmeyr but by respected commentators and journalists too.

"I still can't wrap my mind over the evil of that AWB story. But the ideology of the AWB is evil anyway," tweeted commentator Khaya Dlanga, for instance, while comedian Trevor Noah tapped out: "Ex Awb member admits to killing farm owners for money and to create fear & racial hatred. Disgusting".

"Turns out the AWB is killing farmers. March for THAT, Steve" (Hofmeyr), tweeted the satirical puppet, Chester Missing.

The only problem? The story had no legs whatsoever and soon afterwards De Wet was discredited as an unstable attention-seeker whose knowledge of the grizzly Steenkamp murder was far too sketchy to be credible. (Click here for a News24 story and here for a Mail & Guardian story about her claims and credibility.)

The book seems to have now closed emphatically on De Wet's wild claims when last month the 17-year-old boy charged with the murder of Deon Steenkamp, his wife, Christelle, and their 14-year-old daughter, Marthella, was found guilty by the court. He was also found guilty of raping Marthella.

The boy's identity cannot be revealed because he is a minor.

The fact that the DFA was suckered by De Wet, who was arrested in May 2012 on charges of terrorism and treason, says less about this newspaper than it does about the state of SA's media and the way social media has both enlivened and disrupted the media and the national debate.

The DFA is hardly the first paper to fall for a "scoop" of uncertain provenance. Let's not forget the Sunday Times' splash of 2011 of a Facebook fan page displaying a picture of a white man with a rifle posing over the apparently lifeless body of a black child.  (It turned out that the picture was three years, the boy was not hurt but sleeping and the picture was a joke done with the participation of his father.)

DFA editor Johan du Plessis did not make himself available for an interview or to comment before deadline despite numerous requests from Politics.web for him to do so.

Across the newspaper industry, the pressure to deliver an exclusive story or something special to catch readers' attention in this time of sustained circulation decline is immense.

Many new organisations, big and small, fall victim to spooks and wild claims at some point. And because of the rise of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, these mistakes are amplified and torn apart far more viciously than in pre-social media days.

Anyone can voice their opinion and get an audience today - and social media can get very shrill very quickly.

"You really have to be extra vigilant these days because these things fly around so fast," says veteran journalist Prof Anton Harber, who is head of Wits University's Journalism Programme. "There are two things going on (with the De Wet story): 1). The allegations did feed on quite a common fear (of extremist groups); and 2). You have less gatekeeping in social media so the crazy fringe voices that would have struggled to get media attention before can get out there quite quickly and effectively through social media."

Today blogging, Twitter and Facebook has made everyone a publisher. Before the advent of social media, the editors of letters pages might have blocked extreme  views or people lacking credibility - or says, Harber, the paper might have written a story that reflected its own scepticism.

In addition, says Harber, the fact that newsrooms are under pressure and there are few people in the system available to do fact-checking makes it easier for such claims and stories to slip through the gatekeepers.

Untested allegations and sensational claims get lots of buzz on Twitter because a retweet does not mean an endorsement, says Rapport editor Waldimar Pelser, only to fall on fallow ground in the media where claims can be investigated and tested.

"This (De Wet story) says much more about the nature of Twitter than the nature of our country's politics or the media," he told Politics.web.

Rapport was aware of De Wet making claims about the Griekwastad murder (but not of their exact substance) before the DFA story through reporter Jacques Steenkamp, who followed the Griekwastad case from Day One - and did not fall into the trap that the smaller paper did.

Steenkamp, who is now current affairs producer at SABC News/RSG FM and whose book on the Griekwastad case has just been published by Random, told Politicsweb: "I knew about Cornelia de Wet's claims because I was spending so much time on the story and knew the investigating officer very well... The claims she made were outrageous. The investigating officer told me she didn't know where the (Steenkamps') farm was and didn't know many of the details of what actually happened. She wasn't even in the province (Northern Cape) at the time of the murders. I think she was in Mpumalanga."

The AWB exists in very small, sparse pockets, says Steenkamp, but no one takes them seriously anymore. "I don't think the AWB matter all that much anymore and, even so, they've denounced Cornelia de Wet - and said she's not part of them."

Pelser says: "The AWB were on the fringe even at their peak. Today Rapport ignores them -as does the majority of mainstream media... The AWB is not politics today."

The irony is that the buzz on Twitter tapped into fears of the now neutered AWB and the real fears of South African farmers for their own safety on farms. But in reality, the Griekwastad case is a tragic and highly unusual killing in what is one of the safest farming areas in South Africa.

Steenkamp says that he was amazed to discover when he started reporting the story in Griekwastad - a far flung, sparsely populated part of the Northern Cape - that people go to sleep without locking their doors. Because the land is so poor, the farms are enormous and isolated while most crime is related to alcohol abuse in the few towns and villages of the area. 

The real story of Griekwastad, says Steenkamp, is a very sad one: of a family slain and torn apart and a boy whose life is broken - and how this has divided the town because so many people continue to believe he is innocent even after the guilty verdict.

The Steenkamp family were also a prominent, wealthy clan in their community - well liked and regarded - so the shock has been all the greater.  

Says Steenkamp (no relation): "What struck me (about the Cornelia de Wet claims) was that it was very ironic that it was about this man who owned a security company basically paying the AWB to be a hit squad. The right wing have always gone on about black and white, black and white and now you have a bunch of white right-wing guys saying they were paid to murder white families - that was the intriguing factor... I tweeted it as well... Even the boy grabbed hold of this to try get off murder. (The people around him) were grasping at this little bit of hope that he didn't do it."

Gill Moodie is the editor and publisher of Grubstreet.co.za. She can be followed on Twitter here.

This article was published with the assistance of the Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit (FNF). The views presented in the article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of FNF.

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