Nonpartisan Fact-Checking Comes to South Africa
JOHANNESBURG â€" A Facebook posting by Steve Hofmeyr, a popular Afrikaans musician, under the heading “my tribe is dying,†cried out for some fact-checking.
Julian Rademeyer of Africa Check, a fledgling journalistic fact-checking Web site in Johannesburg.
Were white South Africans really being slaughtered “like flies� Was a white farmer truly being killed every five days?
Julian Rademeyer, a veteran investigative journalist, is the southern Africa editor of Africa Check, a fledgling Web site that is attempting to bring the same journalistic fact-checking to this part of the world that groups like PolitiFact and FactCheck.org have brought to the United States. Dubious of Mr. Hofmeyr’s claims on Facebook, Mr. Rademeyer commissioned an investigation.
The group found that the best available data suggested that whites were not dying in greater numbers and certainly at nowhere near the rate that Mr. Hofmeyr asserted. Indeed, Mr. Hofmeyr’s evidence was based on a dubious, decade-old article that had been making the rounds on right-wing Web sites under the byline of a supposed “black journalist†whom no one could locate and who appeared to have written only that one article in his entire career.
“The claims are incorrect and grossly exaggerated,†Africa Check declared, relying on the work of a freelance researcher, Nechama Brodie.
There is a long history of courageous and sophisticated journalism in South Africa, tracing back to the struggle against apartheid and continuing in the early decades of multiracial democracy. But until now, there has been nothing like the kind of nonpartisan fact-checking initiatives that have become so prominent â€" and contentious â€" in the United States and Europe.
“I worked in Nigeria for five years,†said Peter Cunliffe-Jones, who oversees Africa Check from his office at the AFP Foundation, the group’s sponsor and primary benefactor, in London. “Something that I became more and more frustrated with is what I call statement journalism, where a minister has said something ridiculous, opposition said something equally ridiculous and no one knows where the truth lies â€" and certainly the journalist doesn’t tell the reader where the truth lies between them.â€
The task, both he and Mr. Rademeyer acknowledge, is more difficult in Africa than in Europe or North America, where a culture of accountability and at least a nod toward transparency is ingrained. Still, in South Africa at least, there is a pool of government data that, however imperfect, can be sifted.
“Africa Check doesn’t have the kind of traction yet that PolitiFact has in the U.S., but it is beginning to have some impact,†said Nic Dawes, the editor of The Mail and Guardian newspaper in Johannesburg. “I think it’s an excellent initiative, and I think if they develop their journalistic capacity a little bit and focus in on some of the big issues and big figures and big claims, they will be a very relevant force.â€
Africa Check was set up as a nonprofit in June 2012 after the venture won some seed money in a contest sponsored by Google to improve news gathering in Africa. The Web site operates in partnership with the journalism program at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, since part of its mission is to train aspiring journalists how to check the accuracy of statements by political leaders and media outlets.
“We looked at what’s taken place with the fact-checking movement, first in the U.S. and now in Europe, and we were conscious that people in Africa, like people everywhere, need accurate information in order to make decisions,†Mr. Cunliffe-Jones said. “We wanted to do something about that.â€
For now, Africa Check has one full-time journalist, Mr. Rademeyer, one researcher, and a pool of experts and freelancers who pitch in as needed. Mr. Rademeyer works out of his house, though the group is expecting to open an office soon.
Also to come, Mr. Cunliffe-Jones said, is an expansion to allow the group to go beyond South Africa to some neighboring nations â€" and perhaps, down the road, to the rest of Africa.
Mr. Rademeyer said the group aims to post two investigations per week, although some weeks one is all they can manage with their limited staff.
There has been some angry reaction, Mr. Rademeyer said. The report on Mr. Hofmeyr, for instance, drew threats on the group’s Facebook page and anti-Semitic slurs (the freelancer who did the research was Jewish).
Africa Check has taken on major South Africa political figures (noting, for instance, that President Jacob Zuma overstated the number of schools being built in a rural province) and big media outlets (most notably a BBC report that accepted incorrect estimates from a right-wing group about how many South African whites were living in squatter camps).
One of the group’s earliest investigations involved a report in The Sowetan newspaper that doubled the percentage of black teenagers in the country who were H.I.V. positive, a report that was picked up in papers around the world. “The sad thing is that the truth was horrific enough,†Mr. Rademeyer said.
Africa Check also undertakes lighthearted probes. One frequently repeated statement about Johannesburg, for instance, is that the city â€" situated at almost 6,000 feet along South Africa’s nearly treeless Highveld â€" constitutes the largest man-made forest in the world. (That is almost certainly not the case, Africa Check concluded.)
Some of the less serious investigations sometimes strike unexpected pay dirt. Trying to settle the endless argument in South Africa about which city’s drivers are the worst, Africa Check discovered that the country’s traffic statistics were in a shambles, Mr. Rademeyer said.
“We’ve got to cherry-pick what we look at, because of a lack of resources,†he said. “It isn’t easy. For now, we try to do what we can.â€
The need for more facts and fewer fanciful assertions is becoming more acute, he said.
“A very unpleasant divide has developed between the press and government in South Africa,†Mr. Rademeyer said. “There was a surprising degree of transparency from 1996 to 1999, but when Mandela left office, first under Thabo Mbeki and then under Zuma, it got worse.â€
Add to that the cutbacks at local newspapers, and there are fewer people to do the kind of fact-checking required to get to the bottom of things.
“We are getting more and more response,†Mr. Rademeyer said. “We are being quoted more in the local papers. Our role, really, is to get people to think more critically about what they are being told, and we are seeing some signs of that.â€
A version of this article appeared in print on July 24, 2013, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Nonpartisan Fact-Checking Comes to South Africa.
