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Structured poverty, blatant sabotage, no service delivery, xenophobia, increasing unemployment with no access to the country’s economy, privatisation of statal and parastatal organisations through amongst others, infiltration and plundering are efforts of destabilisation.
Hard working moles seem to be everywhere, more particularly in strategic key positions.
To add insult to injury, the same oligarchs of colonial-apartheid and their minions in the middle class abuse the much-hailed liberal constitution and the judiciary to divide and destroy.

South Africa finds herself in a situation where it is distribution of wealth to the oligarchs versus the redistribution of wealth to the majority of the population.
This has little to do with nationalisation. Governments the world over do not interfere in business. Governments are administrators. South Africa’s oligarchs have always owned and controlled agriculture, business, finance, industry, the academia and civil society, including the corporate media and all lobby groups.

Those oligarchs are also the architects of colonial-apartheid. They are quite easily identified.
The concerned citizen would simply have to research in the libraries of the corporate media and publishing companies, the “captains of industry”.
It is they, who reject the current structure of the ANC as the ruling party in government. The above-mentioned architects of apartheid and federalism have one mission and one goal in common — to destroy South Africa’s economy by collapsing the Rand currency, create a scorched earth and bankrupt the country in order to

buy the assets for less than a song. This seems the reason for having placed moles. Yet, they present themselves as the “white knights of the day”.

Interestingly, Nelson Mandela applauds South Africa’s “economic growth”. However, the doyen of Harvard economists, Joseph Schumpeter, described such “growth” as “creative destruction”. This is documented in John Pilger’s book, “Hidden Agendas”.
Against the above-sketched background, the hidden agenda of a “Third Force” within the ruling African National Congress (ANC), the government, the parastatals, the city councils and the media becomes clear.

It would explain the countrywide positioning of moles in many of the strategic key positions in the public and private sectors. It takes a genius not to note a common hidden agenda.
In order to enlighten above described analysis, the difference between (a) “reportage”, (b) “propaganda” and (c) “corporate media’s soft power” should be defined.

It would shed some light on the modus operandi of the owners of the corporate world.
The “New Oxford American Dictionary” defines reportage as follows:
“Reporting of news, for the press and the broadcast media, also factual presentation in a book, or other text, especially when this adopts a journalistic style.” 
The “New Oxford American Dictionary” defines propaganda: “Chiefly derogatory information, especially of a biased misleading nature, used to promote or publicise a particular political cause or point of view.”

The “soft power” corporate media wields, comes in the form of continuous propaganda, misrepresentation of situations, dressed up as real reportage. Real facts would not be allowed to stand in the way. It promotes its own hidden agenda only.
“Their reporters have become the hit men and hit women to tarnish the images of dissidents and discredit those, who do not fit into their agenda”, a retired former editor explained.

Respected journalist and author of the book “Hidden Agendas” — John Pilger — comments on the media, “The space is only for soundbites, which are frequently merely rhetoric, not so much ‘concise’ as sanctioned.
“Statements and assumptions that are part of a received wisdom are regarded as ‘facts’, while those that are critical are rejected as ‘opinions’ (also conspiratorial theorists and/or dissidents, this author).”

Pilger observes further, “Language plays a vital part; popular concepts like “democracy”, “freedom”, “choice” and reform are emptied of their dictionary meanings.
In the late twentieth century (and early twenty first century) it is reinforced by the facility of technology and the illusion of an “information society”, which in reality means more media owned by fewer and fewer conglomerates. There is minimal public discussion about this.” This also means the media talks to itself and the intelligentsia only at the cost of the majority of the population and democracy.

Taking keen interest in global current affairs, this author would need to add that Western imperial propaganda successfully uses the corporate mainstream media to propagate and motivate criminal activities as well as direct and indirect interventions to enforce regime change.
The “media platform” has no space for pluralism, least of all for a fresh and different voice. South Africa’s corporate media is a case in point. It has become a central pillar of establishment. It is the biggest in Africa by far also owning media interests in Asia and South America. To strengthen the above observation, it is important to reflect what is orchestrated for and co-ordinated on the front pages and “debated” in political talk shows immediately after one of the most important conferences of the ruling ANC in the week of June 25, 2012, to June 29, 2012, the “Policy Conference”.

Instead of factually reporting on the policy conference and what came out of it, South Africa’s corporate media focused on one isolated incident, when one individual grabbed the microphone from another and the other, when two individuals expressed their views rather loudly. But, the rest of the 3 500 ANC delegates took their conference seriously, listening and participating attentively. They debated serious issues such as land, the banking industry and the economy.

The front pages of the Sunday newspapers, the news bulletins and talk shows of the privately owned electronic media leave no stone unturned to frustrate, embarrass and discredit president Jacob Zuma, the ANC and government. Corporate mainstream media embarked on grossly misrepresenting facts in their papers for Sunday, July 1, 2012. The Sunday papers expectedly sang from the same hymnbook, the same page and in tune. “It was shameful”, the leader of the South African Communist Party (SACP), Blade Nzimande said.

Here are the examples: “The Sunday Independent” headline stated, “Fights at ANC Indaba”.
The “Sunday Times” headline had this to reflect, “Chaos at ANC Indaba”.

The “City Press” front page screamed, “Tide Turns Against Zuma” and the “Sunday World” had this to say on its front page: “Zuma fears Jail”, again quoting disgraced former ANCYL president Julius Malema.
The aforementioned disingenuous headlining with lack of any substantial and factual reportage raises serious questions about corporate media’s role, whether it is indeed “media”, or more honestly, propaganda. It is orchestrated “soft power peddling”.

The media deliberately misrepresented a “division” inside the ruling ANC. The culture and tradition of robust debate was ignored. 
Corporate media’s “soft power” was allowed to pre-empt the ANC membership’s policy debate at the conference in Midrand, Johannesburg. That “soft power” supports the divisive camps within the ANC, working hard to divide and weaken leadership. The hidden agenda focuses on unseating ANC president Jacob Zuma.

It is also well known that the frustrated “chequebook anarchists” within the ANC leadership played to the gallery of the “soft power”, as they answer to the same oligarchs of apartheid. In fact, the ANC is fully aware of who those individuals are and what their agenda is.

The ANC is also well informed on whom the architects of apartheid, the oligarchs with the chequebooks in the shadows are. Their pseudo-militants without much of a support base would find it difficult to remain in the top-structures.

The above-mentioned well-resourced members of the ‘Fifth Brigade’, or ‘Third Force’ within the ANC, encouraged the ANCYL from the onset to publicly dictate a change in the structure of mines, banks and land ownership. They hoped to be able to create a capital flight out of South Africa and collapse the economy.

Their strategy is clear. Not only have they punched way above their political weight and credibility and therefore, oversold themselves as leaders and future presidents of the ruling ANC. What do they really lead? How clean are they really? How did they achieve their wealth and positions?
Who is actually setting the political agenda in South Africa, when the ‘soft power’ of the media and its broad network within civil society play musical chairs?

ANC president and head of state and commander of the armed forces, Jacob Zuma, is exposed to a continuously vicious campaign attempting to unseat him.

It began when taxpayers’ money financed the state machinery to criminalise and marginalise Jacob Zuma. Yet finally, the conductor and his orchestra stood accused to have committed perjury. Meanwhile, Zuma restored the democratic power to the branches. His predecessor had collapsed the branches. Zuma also rid the ANC from an unelected elite, which had classified themselves as “leaders”.

Despite Zuma’s acquittal, South Africa’s corporate media, and its owners — the architects of apartheid — and their well-funded “Fifth Brigade” have not stopped in trying to oust Jacob Zuma. But they find it growing harder, as an astute Zuma remains popular. This time it became clear that he has taken charge.
Jacob Zuma enthusiastically ensured that the ANC returned to its former self, starting with the “political school” and robust, open debate immediately after the Polokwane Conference.

The above-mentioned however, “is viewed by the internal ‘Third Force’ as a betrayal of the role re-called former president Thabo Mbeki played in his destruction of the ANC from within. Mbeki’s inner circle founded a new political party, the ‘Congress of the People (COPE)’. But it did not succeed,” a senior ANC NEC and NWC member explained.

It also seemed, when South Africa joined BRICS, opening the doors of the economy to influences from the Russian Federation and China that the oligarchs felt that they had been marginalised. When Zuma assisted to start a development fund outside the US Dollar system, the anti-Zuma noise grew to a crescendo.

• Udo W. Froese is an  independent political- and socio-economic analyst and columnist, based in Johannesburg, South Africa.