I Will Not Be Silenced — Inside Zuma's online harassment campaign to keep journalist Karyn Maughan quiet

Moments after the ruling, [state prosecutor Advocate Billy] Downer and I spoke on the phone. We were both elated because we placed huge value on the fact that a court of impartial judges had examined Zuma’s ‘case’ against us and rightly seen it for what it was: an abusive attempt to prevent us from doing our jobs. “We won 100%,” Downer had texted me before that call.

I cried when I heard his voice. “It’s over, Billy,” I said. “It’s over, it’s over, it’s over.”

In their ruling, the judges also referred to how social media harassment was being used as part of Zuma’s unlawful campaign to silence me. Ironically, because the online harassment campaign was largely driven by Zuma’s daughter Duduzile and several of his wellknown hangers-on, it had become incredibly powerful evidence of the former president’s ulterior purpose against me. What was intended to terrify me into silence resulted in multiple rulings that would protect not just me but other journalists as well.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Zuma’s private prosecution of Downer, Maughan struck off the roll – but lawyers, supporters cry victory

This is the part that is hard for me to write about.

I need to acknowledge that the level of vicious dishonesty I experienced, and continue to experience, did come at a price I do not believe anyone should have to pay – not least of all because my only “sin” was that I kept doing my job and reporting on Zuma when he and his supporters were desperate to keep me quiet. Rather than engaging with the facts of my journalism, they chose to attack me as a human being, with dishonest and often deeply sexist accusations that portrayed me as an alcoholic (as mentioned, I don’t drink alcohol because of my diabetes), mentally unwell (a claim I won’t engage with because I don’t want to legitimise the stigmatisation of mental illness) and a spy, “witch” or Satan.

All of this, Daily Maverick journalist Pauli van Wyk pointed out, was part of the same dehumanising language used against women journalists in an attempt to justify the often sexually violent threats that almost all of us will face. Pauli has been repeatedly targeted because of the excellent work she has done in investigating the links between the EFF and the collapse of the looted VBS Mutual Bank. Like me, she has been accused of “not being a journalist” but a “witch” or a propagandist, simply because she has asked questions that the EFF and its leadership apparently do not want to answer. 

In some of my darkest moments during the Zuma private prosecution, Pauli would invite me for walks and, when I opened up to her about how I was feeling, offer me advice that I still hold on to today. One of the most powerful things she ever said to me was to remember that, for all the coordinated bot accounts that sought to dehumanise and attack us, there were many more people who valued our work and believed that, in doing our best to expose the truth, we were fighting for them.

Pauli spoke about the Venda and Tsonga people who lost their life savings through the VBS looting – people “who took the time to find me, thank me and ask me to never stop and do them justice”. She added: “I’ve been to Venda, and an 86-year-old woman in a village 40km from Thohoyandou asked me to come back soon because ‘I don’t have much longer to live and I need to know there has been some justice done for me’. That woman in particular, Mme Margaret Chauke, broke my heart and hardened my resolve.”

Pretty much all the women journalists I have spoken to about the harassment we face online say they try, as far as possible, not to engage with it. Many mute the accounts of their most vicious attackers so they never see what is said about them. Others, such as Redi Tlhabi, will take the fight to the anonymous trolls who try to hurl abuse at them and point out the usually obvious dishonesty of their claims and the paucity of truth in their arguments. Because I firmly believe that social media abuse is designed to distract me from doing my job, I ignore it but will block or report accounts that harass me or threaten me with physical harm. Like Pauli, I know that when I engage people in South Africa, they appreciate my work and encourage me to keep going. And I know, for a fact, that the rape and death threats I experience online are not a true reflection of the country I love and believe in.

So, when my lawyers argued that we had to draw attention to the online abuse I was experiencing as a way of showing the true purpose of Zuma’s case against me, I was uneasy. I could see the sense in what they were saying, but I also did not want to allow myself to be exposed to what I believed was the psychological equivalent of toxic sludge. I did not need to dip my toe into it to know that it would not be good for me.

As it turned out, I did not have to. Because [News24 editor-in-chief] Adriaan [Basson] was determined to ensure that I was psychologically protected from the full extent of the threats and insults I was facing, News24 attorney Charl du Plessis took on the task of investigating Zuma’s social media machinery. He did not have to look far because Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla had decided to use her own Twitter platform to target anyone she perceived as hostile to her father’s interests. And that included me.

After the Jacob Zuma Foundation’s Twitter profile announced on 6 September 2022 that Downer and I had been served, Duduzile tweeted a manipulated picture of me in an orange jumpsuit with the word “Sboshwa” (prisoner) written on it. She captioned the image: ‘Criminally Accused … You Look Good in Orange Sisi’. Subsequent investigations by my colleague Kyle Cowan revealed that the original source of the badly Photoshopped image was then-suspended public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s husband, David Skosana, who had used his social media profile to attack journalists he perceived as critical of his disgraced wife. He would later be sworn in as an MP for Zuma’s [uMkhonto Wesizwe] party.

While retweeting 38 comments that were hostile, insulting or abusive to me on the day her father’s prosecution against me was announced, Duduzile also posted a flurry of other tweets about me. They included:

Criminally Accused, Karyn Maughan, Was Yesterday Served by The Sheriff For Breaking The Law. Accused Number Two, Karyn Maughan, Looks to Serve Up to 15 Years in Prison WHEN Found Guilty. This Will Be A Lesson For ‘BoBreak The Story First Journalists’!

In response to a tweet where I posted Adriaan’s defence of me and quoted his statement that the private prosecution was “clearly an attempt to intimidate Maughan and other journalists covering his [Zuma’s] many travails”, she wrote:

Oksalalayo . . . According to Your White Laws, YOU ARE A CRIMINAL!!!

“Oksalalayo” is a slang term used to respond to a bitter person who refuses to admit that they are wrong. 

In reference to the fact that Zuma’s supporters frequently try to discredit my reporting on the basis that I did not train as a lawyer, and after I stopped people from responding to my posts because of the level of abuse I was getting, she tweeted:

We Will Meet In Court. Open Your Comments Miss SC.

SC stands for senior counsel and is a term frequently used by Zuma’s supporters to insult me.

Finally, she posted a picture of Downer and me in which we were identified as “Accused No 1” and “Accused No 2” with the caption:

The Whites Are Busy Here Today.

Duduzile would, however, save her vilest post for the day after Downer and I were first forced to appear in court. I had posted, in response to the barrage of hatred I was confronting, that:

People with real evidence and a strong case don’t need to bully, harass and intimidate. Abuse really is the last resort of the desperate. And it won’t work.

Duduzile quoted that post and stated:

People Who Break The Law Should Be Made to Account. Resorting To Wanting To Be Seen As A Victim Will Not Work. You Have Abused Many Black People Disguising Yourself As A ‘Legal Journalist’… Get Ready to be Someone’s Wyfie!

As a journalist who had reported on many gang cases when I worked for the Cape Argus as a high court reporter, I instantly realised, with horror, what she was saying. I knew that “wyfie” was the derogatory term used by gangsters to describe inmates who were “wives” to more powerful gang members and, as a result, were routinely raped in prison. Duduzile, who had been a crucial defence witness in her father’s trial on charges of raping a young woman she had grown up with, was openly celebrating the prospect of me being raped in prison.

When the [KwaZulu-Natal High Court in Pietermaritzburg] considered this social media evidence, from which Zuma had sought to distance himself by claiming that he was not responsible for his daughter’s online activity, judges Kruger, Henriques and Masipa specifically referred to all the names I had been called since the former president had launched his case against me. I had been referred to as “a thing, a bitch, a lying bitch, a white bitch, a witch, a racist, a pig, an alcoholic, a criminal, a hypocrite, a propaganda journalist, a racist, a servant of white privilege, a hack and an askari (traitor)”.

While acknowledging Zuma’s claim that he had no control over the social media posts, the judges found that I had been “harassed and prohibited from proper reporting and does so with a cloud hanging over her head and with the threat of either private prosecution in a criminal court or possible civil litigation being instituted against her. In addition, some of these comments may incite physical harm.”

Because of the threats Downer and I were facing, News24 and [the National Prosecuting Authority] had provided us with bodyguards during our court appearances. On roads that I was accustomed to driving alone and without fear, I would travel as a passenger in the back seat of a van, flanked by men wearing bulletproof vests and carrying multiple guns. When those bodyguards picked me up from King Shaka International Airport in Durban, I had to suppress my desire to start laughing and, simultaneously, be sick. I simply could not believe what was happening to me. And I often wondered if [Dali] Mpofu or the other lawyers on Zuma’s legal team understood the level of danger in which they had placed Downer and me. DM

I Will Not Be Silenced is published by Tafelberg/NB Publishers.  Maughan is an award-winning journalist, documentary producer and best-selling author. She writes for News24 and is a BBC contributor.