On August 25 1835, an astonishing story hit the pages of the New York Sun newspaper. From his base in SA, in the far-flung colony of the Cape of Good Hope, the noted British astronomer Sir John Herschel (LLD, FRS &c) had apparently made some amazing discoveries by means of a new telescope.
"We have the happiness of making known to the British publick, and thence to the whole civilised world, recent discoveries in Astronomy which will build an imperishable monument to the age in which we live, and confer upon the present generation of the human race a proud distinction through all future time," the newspaper reported.
The story was serialised over six parts, and contained some wondrous findings. While looking at the moon through his new telescope, Herschel had spotted several horned animals, white and grey in colour, and the remains of ancient triangular temples. He’d also discovered what could only be a unicorn. "It was of a bluish lead colour, about the size of a goat, with a head and beard like him, and a single horn, slightly inclined forward from the perpendicular."
Most amazing, in the "noble valleys" at the foot of a mountain, was the discovery of a new race of humanoids. They were of great personal beauty, "and appeared in our eyes scarcely less lovely than the general representations of angels by the more imaginative schools of painters. Their social economy seemed to be regulated by laws or ceremonies … but their works of art were more numerous, and displayed a proficiency of skill quite incredible to all except actual observers."
The newspaper went to some pains to explain why the "Great Astronomical Discoveries Lately Made" story was so exciting.
"To render our enthusiasm intelligible, we will state at once, that by means of a telescope of vast dimensions and an entirely new principle, the younger Herschel, at his observatory in the Southern Hemisphere, has already made the most extraordinary discoveries in every planet of our solar system; has discovered planets in other solar systems; has obtained a distinct view of objects in the moon, fully equal to that which the naked eye commands of terrestrial objects at the distance of a hundred yards; has affirmatively settled the question whether this satellite be inhabited, and by what order of things; has firmly established a new theory of cometary phenomena; and has solved or corrected nearly every leading problem of mathematical astronomy."
The Sun, perhaps not incidentally, is famous as the source of that frequently quoted aphorism about journalism, attributed to John B Bogart, city editor between 1873 and 1890. "When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news."
On June 8 2021, an astonishing story hit the pages of the Pretoria News, owned by a media group based at the Cape of Good Hope, in the far-flung colony of Cape Town. The noted (albeit for all the wrong reasons) editor Piet Rampedi had made an amazing discovery by means of a new journalistic technology called "making stuff up". A woman had "given birth to 10 babies, breaking the Guinness World Record".
Even more incredibly, further investigation — by what the Sun would probably have described as "an intellect of vast dimensions and an entirely new principle of bullshit", but what IOL journalists are contractually compelled to refer to as Mandela’s Dr Iqbal Survé™ — revealed that the decuplets had disappeared.
According to Mandela’s Dr Iqbal Survé™, "this story, which started out as a feel-good story, turned into a twisted tale of how a poverty-stricken black woman was taken advantage of by police, doctors, nurses and social workers". A "detailed investigation" uncovered "a syndicate of human traffickers central to whom are several obstetricians and gynaecologists operating in the private sector and using state hospitals … to further their aims".
Of course, when a genius discovers something that mere mortals are incapable of understanding — like, say, life on the moon, or the trafficking of 10 babies born to one mother in Tembisa — there will always be naysayers. This happened to the Sun story, and it’s happening to Mandela’s Dr Iqbal Survé™.
According to the Sun (and as an aside, I now know where the ANC Youth League gets its flamboyantly otiose writing style from), "when at a loss to conceive by what extra authority [Herschel] had made so bold a declaration, the men of science of Europe who were not acquainted with his secret, regarded his [discovery] with incredulous contumely, and continued to terrorise upon the strength of former predictions".
According to Mandela’s Dr Iqbal Survé™, the same thing happens whenever he and the media group formerly known as independent publish their "shocking revelations". The uncaring world laughs at them.
At this point, I should probably reveal, to your astonishment, that the Sun’s story was, regrettably, not true. There are in fact no unicorns and humanoids living on the moon. The Great Moon Hoax is a famous example of early fake news. But just like you (I’m assuming), many readers at the time were fooled.
How they were fooled is a useful prism through which to understand what is happening at Independent Media, and why.
First, other newspapers picked up the initial instalment of the moon story, and spread it before realising that the subsequent instalments were progressively more outlandish.
A similar thing happened with the Tembisa 10 story, where even the BBC covered it as true. And, of course, in much the way social media amplifies misinformation, coverage debating whether the story was true or false kept it alive.
And in much the same way that Mandela’s Dr Iqbal Survé™ refuses to acknowledge that his story of the decuplets is made up, the Sun didn’t retract its story.
According to the US Library of Congress website, "this became a story in itself, a story about how newspapers should behave. An occasional hoax might be forgiven, but there were objections to the failure of the editors of the Sun to own up to the truth once the hoax was unveiled."
This is one of the primary objections to Mandela’s Dr Iqbal Survé™’s doubling down on the initial made-up story. Instead of acknowledging that it is false, he is trying to change the narrative by making up a story about the 10 babies being trafficked.
The man identified as the likely author of the moon hoax used the same obfuscatory tactics, alleging that the problem lay with those who didn’t believe it, not with the evidence.
In a letter to the New York Evening Post, he wrote: "I beg to state, as unequivocally as the words can express it, that I did not make those discoveries and it is my sincere conviction, founded on a careful examination of the internal evidence of the work in which they first appeared, that, if made at all, they were made by the great astronomer to whom all Europe, if not an incredulous America, will undoubtedly ascribe them."
Much of the above will be familiar to you, and you’re probably a little bored of the saga of Mandela’s Dr Iqbal Survé™ and the Amazing Disappearing Decuplets.
I would be, too, if it weren’t for the fact that Independent has now published a whole new bunch of lies. This time, it’s inventing accusations against the Daily Maverick, claiming the news organisation has links to SA’s criminal underworld.
In the same way that the moon hoax buried its absurd fictions in a plethora of unrelated information, the Independent tries to buttress its lies in a wealth of unrelated facts.
All the most successful lies and disinformation are built around a kernel of truth, using that to convince the undecided that there might be some merit to the fictions. With the moon hoax, it was the fact that there actually was a famous astronomer called Sir John Herschel, who was working in SA. With what the Independent is calling, in a slightly bemusing headline, "The Daily Maverick’s ‘MafiaBrkic’ Connections and Currencies", it’s the fact that the Daily Maverick doesn’t reveal its funders.
This is unfortunate, and one hopes the Daily Maverick is reconsidering this stance. It’s the one chink in its impressive armour — one that Mandela’s Dr Iqbal Survé™ will exploit to the hilt to deflect attention from the flagrant lies told by him and his newspaper group.
There are no unicorns on the moon, there are no decuplets, and the Daily Maverick is not run by the Mafia. What there is, though, is Independent — a media company being asset-stripped of its credibility so as to push the agenda of one man. At least the New York Sun’s fake stories were about pushing sales rather than covering up the fact that they’d stolen the moon.