Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi has this week repeatedly told the Parliamentary committee looking into his allegations of political interference in the work of the police about corrupt journalists working in conjunction with rogue intelligence and police actors to shield politicians from corruption investigations.

Amongst other things, Mkhwanazi told the commission that: “there are many journalists that are part of the investigation,” [he was referencing investigations into efforts to scupper corruption probes]. He said that the extent of this problem was so serious that: “I am calling for State Security investigations against them.” He also said that: “There are very credible journalists who are doing wonderful jobs…who investigate cases of corruption, of murders of people, and they bring it to attention…[but others] are used to publish…the wrong information, the misinformation.”

The general told the committee that the problem posed such a threat to the stability and security of the country that the State Security Agency needs to conduct counterintelligence operations against certain news houses in order to root out the problem. Counterintelligence operations are designed to identify and neutralise hostile intelligence actors that threaten the security or stability of a state.

Precedent

There is a decade of precedent of South African media companies engaging in such behaviour. In most cases, the playbook was similar: an intelligence report or similar document is manufactured or circulated that would discredit the reputation and standing of investigative agencies or other actors seeking to hold corrupt politicians accountable. Media houses are then: “handed” the report and circulate the material to the public, sometimes in dramatic terms, with the effect that investigations or agencies folded whilst the public was sorely misled.

Often, the media completely inverted the truth, accusing those investigating corruption and malfeasance of the very corruption they were investigating in order to shield the targets of their investigations.

In 2006, for example, a document called the Browse Mole dossier circulated among politicians and the press. The leak of the dossier sought to discredit the work of the Directorate of Special Operations (the Scorpions), which was subsequently shut down. The closure of the Scorpions was regarded as a key step towards the looting and corruption of South Africa’s state capture era.

In 2011, reports were circulated that the organised crime unit in Cato Manor operated as a covert death squad. Those reports, it was later revealed, were designed as an information operation to undermine the commander of that unit, who, in the hysteria generated by the reporting, was arrested on trumped-up charges. He was later exonerated and the allegations proven false, and it was found that the whole operation, including the role of media houses, had been designed to shut down investigations into corruption that implicated senior political leaders.

In 2014, media houses promoted the idea that a rogue unit was operating unlawfully inside the South African Revenue Service (SARS). The: “SARS rogue unit” reports, as these were styled, were based on reports manufactured by government agencies. Journalists at the Sunday Times were later identified as having wilfully promoted the idea that honest and hardworking senior staff at SARS were in fact themselves the corrupt actors within that organisation, in an effort to shield the corrupt leadership of that organisation which was working in cahoots with corrupt politicians.

Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, who himself had a background in intelligence operations, wrote: “once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action”.

Powell

Most recently, in 2025, another intelligence report was employed by mainstream media companies to suggest that Democratic Alliance (DA) MP Emma Powell had sought to sabotage a trade and investment pact between South Africa and the United States, and that she had acted in other ways to undermine South Africa’s economy. Powell had, in fact, been in Washington to argue for the retention of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, and to lobby Americans to maintain trade and investment relations with South Africa. The pressure and threats she faced caused Powell to resign from her foreign policy portfolio at the DA.

Beyond the recent past, there is deep historical precedent for this kind of activity within the South African media.

During the apartheid era, intelligence units ran information operations and cultivated journalists in newsrooms. There was even a formal strategy to do this known as Stratcom. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission recorded testimony that a: “special relationship” existed between South African media houses and the intelligence services.

Some of the most senior editors in the country were implicated. Intelligence operatives of that era record that scores of journalists were placed in newsrooms to write stories to shield politicians from corruption and human rights abuse allegations, discredit or intimidate those investigating them, and wholly mislead the public about the reality of what was happening in the country.