Fact-checking the checkers: A critique of ‘neutrality’ in the face of genocide

A critical examination of Africa Check’s controversial ruling on South African political parties and Israel. This in-depth analysis examines media neutrality, political alliances and the dangers of context-free fact-checking during a genocide debate.

By HASSEN LORGAT

On March 19, 2024, the reputable fact-checking organisation Africa Check published an article by Mary Alexander titled: ‘Misleading to claim eight South African opposition parties “stand with Israel”’. The graphic was reproduced, but the authoritative strap ran on the right side of the image reading ‘FALSE’.

The article’s premise was simple: of the eight parties featured on a viral poster claiming they ‘stand with Israel’, only two (the ACDP and FF Plus) had explicitly said so.

While presented as a neutral contribution to public discourse ahead of the 2024 elections, this fact-check highlights the philosophical and structural weaknesses of the ‘fact-checking strategy’. By prioritising a narrow, literalist test over historical context and political nuance, the ‘checkers’ ended up providing a ‘free pass’ to parties with deep, documented ties to the Israeli state.

We are now poised at a similar moment to when this article was first written: President Ramaphosa has designated November 4, 2026, for the Local Government Elections. Already the boot of repression and baby-kissing is evident, as townships once again witness increased anger and violence unleashed on other Africans who have sought to make South Africa their home. Fact-checkers must rise above the fumes of propaganda and lies.

The structural failures of modern fact-checking

Africa Check asserts: ‘We follow the same process for every fact-check and let the evidence dictate the conclusions. Africa Check does not advocate or take policy positions.’

However, this ‘non-partisan’ stance is itself a problem, especially when addressing responses to a genocidal war.

1. The bias of selection

Fact-checkers are often accused of bias not in their data, but in their selection. Choosing to fact-check this specific graphic just before an election served to exonerate opposition parties from the political ‘blame’ of supporting Israel during an ongoing genocide.

2. The failure of the ‘snapshot’

Fact-checkers often rely on a ‘snapshot’ of a moment – a single tweet or a website mission statement – while ignoring complex, nuanced or implied falsehoods. By ruling claims as ‘mostly true’ or ‘half false’ without historical context, they fail to educate the public. This narrow methodology leaves the public unconvinced, as it ignores the systems of power behind the statements.

3. The funding dilemma: A health warning

One must delve deeper: Africa Check receives funding from Google and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill Gates’ wealth is inextricably linked to Microsoft. Both Google and Microsoft are deeply complicit in what UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese described in her June 2025 report, ‘From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide’, as providing the core tech infrastructure for the Israeli military.

Albanese argues these corporations have profited from an ‘economy of genocide’, where technologies are tested in Gaza and marketed as ‘battle-proven’. Recent investigations by The Guardian and +972 Magazine revealed that Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform was used by the IDF’s elite Unit 8200 to store vast troves of intercepted Palestinian civilian phone calls.

Can an organisation funded by these tech giants truly be the ‘neutral’ arbiter of facts regarding Israel and Palestine?

4. Overreliance on meta platforms and their standards

In a subsequent article published by Alexader under a different headline – https://southafrica-info.com/fact-checks/little-evidence-that-eight-major-south-african-opposition-parties-stand-with-israel/ – the subheading read: ‘It’s an election year in South Africa, and most political parties campaign mainly on local issues. Just two could be said to “stand with Israel”.’

The verification in this article indicated that it was based on Facebook, X and the websites of the parties, without wider scrutiny.

The piece does include a new section on the so-called two-state solution, which I will not explore in detail here. Suffice it to say, the accompanying graphic now features a moving banner at the bottom reading: ‘MISSING CONTEXT’.

This article requires separate analysis, but for now it is worth noting that it does address Meta and Facebook’s standards, which are relevant to our discussion. The author writes, implying adherence to those standards: ‘Some Facebook and Instagram users may have deleted their posts after Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program rated their claims as untrue.’

This is akin to letting the fox guard the henhouse.

At the same time, various reputable bodies – which can be found here (Meta’s Censorship of Palestinian Voices) and here and here – have documented concerns. The simple point being made here is that Facebook is not an innocent player and has skin in the game when it comes to exonerating Israel-supporting organisations when it suits them.

Human Rights Watch published a report, ‘Meta’s Broken Promises: Systemic Censorship of Palestine Content on Instagram and Facebook’, a few months before these fact-checking articles were published, arguing:

‘The company should improve transparency around requests by governments’ internet referral units, including Israel’s Cyber Unit, to remove content “voluntarily” – that is, without a court or administrative order to do so – and about its use of automation and machine learning algorithms to moderate or translate Palestine-related content. It should carry out due diligence on the human rights impact of temporary changes to its recommendation algorithms that it introduced in response to the hostilities between Israel and Hamas since October 7. Meta should also take urgent steps to work with civil society to set targets for the implementation of its outstanding commitments to address overreach in its content suppression of Palestine-related content.’

Fact or fiction: Interrogating the ‘neutral’ definitions

The Alexander’s Africa Check article defines the region using a sterile, encyclopaedic description: ‘Israel lies between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea … Gaza has been controlled by Hamas since 2007.’

This is wrong, and it is a political choice of words that ignores the reality of occupation. Gaza is not a neutral expression, but a deeply political conception and a home for many.

A December 2024 Amnesty International report, ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’, defines Israel as an occupying power in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), and Gaza as a site of ethnic cleansing.

To understand the ‘Gaza problem’, one must look at the history of leaders like Levi Eshkol, who in 1967 suggested that Israel needed to ‘empty’ Gaza by first encouraging ‘voluntary emigration’ and later expelling those who would remain by ‘depriving them of sufficient water so as to leave them with no other choice but to leave as their orchards yellow and wither’.

Israeli leaders that followed adopted ‘repressive and discriminatory laws, policies and practices … that fail to align with the basic principles of international humanitarian law, make the occupation unlawful, and form part of Israel’s system of Apartheid over Palestinians’.

And on September 16, 2025 the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, said in its report that based on the killing of civilians, destruction, forced displacement, blocked aid and official statements after October 7, 2023, ‘Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza’.

Secondly, the author shows her bias when she refers to Palestinian victims as mere ‘numbers’ while using emotive language such as ‘deadly’ for Israeli victims.

In addition, fresh evidence was available at the time of publication. In November 2023, the Israeli Foreign Ministry revised the official death toll of the October 7 attacks from approximately 1 400 down to around 1 200. This revision occurred because many badly burned bodies initially identified as Israeli civilians were later determined to belong to Hamas fighters.

I will not even go into the Hannibal Directive and assertions by other writers that Israel was responsible for the killing of many of its own people.

Many leaders of these parties have publicly displayed their allegiances to Israel and, in many cases, support for the genocide, even if this is not reflected on party websites.

Thirdly, we have to go beyond the superficial tests employed to exonerate the six parties. The problem is much wider than finding only FF Plus and the ACDP guilty of expressing support for Israel.

If the author had cast her net wider, most, if not all, would be found to be allies and supporters of Israel.

At least two junkets targeted political leaders – one in 2015 and another in 2024. These were strategic, all-expenses-paid trips organised by SAFI, an affiliate of the Zionist Federation.

Casting the net wider: The junkets and allegiances

The Africa Check article should have dug deeper into historical context and political networking that reveal a far more cosy relationship with Israel and, by extension, support for its ‘right to defend itself’ with impunity.

Junket 1: The ‘fact-finding’ mission (2015)

In 2015, a high-level delegation organised by the South African Friends of Israel (SAFI) visited Israel.

The SA Jewish Report (SAJR) led with the headline: ‘Holomisa, Lekota: Israel NOT an Apartheid state’.

Bantu Holomisa and Mosiuoa Lekota – a former defence minister and anti-Apartheid activist – were part of the delegation that visited Israel with South African opposition party leaders. Afterwards, they rejected claims that Israel is an Apartheid state, noting that unlike Apartheid South Africa, Israel does not have segregated public services.

The Jewish Report and Radio Islam’s podcast, reproduced by SAJR, also explained their collaboration with Israel.

This shows that ‘facts’ are highly contested and not determined by a simple test. In such junkets, Friends of Israel helped engineer what were called ‘facts’ on fact-finding missions.

The writer, Alexander, seemingly ignored available context and these groups’ cosy relationship with Israel, offering flimsy exoneration.

Junket 2: The ‘secret’ 2024 trip

This junket was also organised by SAFI, and it is thanks to the GOOD Party that this matter came to public attention: https://www.facebook.com/ForGoodZA/videos/secret-frolic-to-israelmps-from-the-da-pa-and-acdp-quietly-travelled-to-israel-m/526143507238931/

Subsequently, media reported on this trip, which many participants referred to as a ‘fact-finding mission’ organised by the South African Friends of Israel.

This was contested by many, who believe that full scrutiny would reveal deep Zionist support for Israel and its policies among the participants.

The trip was ‘secret’ and included participants from the DA, PA and African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP). All delegates were Members of Parliament and confirmed that there was no evidence of Apartheid and that, to the contrary, Israel is a vibrant, progressive, multiracial society. This they said amid an ongoing genocide.

In their statement, SAFI referred to the West Bank and Gaza by their Zionist names, suggesting that the facts were in contradiction with international law:

‘The delegates visited the devastated sites of Kibbutz Aza and the Nova Music Festival, where they heard harrowing testimonies from survivors of the October 7 massacre. They also engaged in high-level meetings with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, senior Foreign Ministry officials, and visited communities in Bethlehem, Judea and Samaria.’

Those who found no Apartheid included Democratic Alliance (DA) spokespersons on Justice and International Relations, Glynnis Breytenbach and Emma Louise Powell respectively; DA MPs Katherine Christie, Bridget Masango, Nicholas Myburgh, Liam Jacobs and Bonginkosi Madikizela.

From the Patriotic Alliance (PA) came MPs Ashley Sauls and Millicent Mathopa, while MP Steve Swart represented the ACDP.

Such a high-profile visit, complete with photographs, was public for all to see, confirming prior affiliations and loyalties.

I will now briefly look at all these parties exonerated.

The parties: A record of support

The ACDP

The party has already been found guilty, though on grounds I will not explore in depth here.

There are Christian Zionist sentiments, as well as the fact that leader Kenneth Meshoe’s late elder daughter, Olga Meshoe Washington, was deeply involved in Israel advocacy work. She founded and directed DEISI (Defend, Embrace, Invest, Support Israel), served on the board of the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel, and reportedly worked as chief operating officer of Club Z, a US-based Zionist youth movement.

Congress of the People (COPE)

On September 6, 2023, in a SAFI-hosted YouTube interview, SAFI spokesperson Bafana Modise spoke to Mosiuoa Lekota on all things Israel and South Africa.

Modise said Jewish people were indigenous and denied that Israel was an Apartheid state. He added that Jews in Palestine are not, and were not, colonisers.

In other reports, including the SAJR ‘no Apartheid in Israel’ article and rebroadcast Radio Islam podcast quoted above, as well as a Jerusalem Post article published in September, Lekota defended Israel.

Lekota stated: ‘In Israel, you won’t find the same divisions between Jews and non-Jews that we used to witness during Apartheid.’

If these examples were so easily accessible, it is difficult to understand why the article relied instead on vague support for South Africa’s genocide case against Israel expressed on X.

The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP)

The late founder and former IFP president, Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who died on September 9, 2023, openly supported Israel when it was unpopular to do so and advocated for closer ties between Israel and South Africa.

He rejected the definition of Israel as an Apartheid state, calling it a ‘unique case of democracy’. The Israeli government assisted KwaZulu under Apartheid in areas such as agriculture, leadership training and women’s co-operatives.

He related to Israel as ‘brothers in suffering’, sharing a sense of mutual struggle and preferred that South Africa play a mediating role rather than isolating Israel.

As chief minister of the Apartheid-era KwaZulu government, Buthelezi visited Israel in August 1985 at the invitation of then Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

There he met Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir and former Foreign Minister Abba Eban, whose birthplace was Cape Town.

The Patriotic Alliance (PA)

Patriotic Alliance leader Gayton McKenzie calls himself ‘the biggest friend of Israel in modern politics’.

In the South African Jewish Report (May 9, 2024), he contrasted his consistent support with the DA’s ‘cowardice’ in hedging its position on the Israel-Hamas conflict.

McKenzie backs Israel on religious grounds: ‘The religion I follow commands me to bless and pray for Israel. I am a Christian and I will listen to the Bible.’

He has visited Israel multiple times before and after October 7, and the PA previously argued that ‘Israel has answers for SA’.

He claims self-sufficiency and independence from friends like Bob Hersov, a neoliberal ideologue and a devout friend of Israel.

This did not stop Hersov, on March 14, 2024, from writing an ode of loyalty to Gayton ‘Kingmaker’ Gayton accompanied with a graphic probably with their approval:

To you his last penny, he’d give,
And he’d ask for none back, cause his visions on track,
G- just wants you to be safe where you live.
He stands up for Israel, he wants rule of law,
No Commies or socialists too

(Note the article was published two days before the Fact Check piece, yet Gayton gets a free pass).

In November 2023, the ANC reportedly gave the PA an ultimatum to drop its pro-Israel stance or leave coalition arrangements at local government level.

McKenzie publicly refused, stating their agreement with the ANC ‘would be coming to an end’ and that the PA ‘will not change its stance on Israel’s war on Gaza simply to maintain its coalition with the ANC’.

In a subsequent video interview in April 2024, he called Hamas a terrorist organisation, voiced full support for Israel and said he would stop the ICJ case.

After the second SAFI junket was exposed, the PA replied: ‘The Patriotic Alliance’s leadership has therefore never made a secret of their support for Israel, as well as our support for peace between Israel and Palestine. Anyone who may have missed this fact is either living under an extremely large rock or has an extremely small brain. We continue to call for the release of the hostages that the Hamas terror group took from Israel, and for the end to the war.’

In June 2025, the PA joined another junket to Israel. According to a SAFI statement, they ‘hosted [a] best-practice visit to Israel for 22 members of the Patriotic Alliance (PA) late last month … the PA has undertaken to leverage their position within the Government of National Unity to increase South Africa’s trade and economic relationship with Israel.’

There is ample evidence of where the PA stood before the article and afterwards, but this was seemingly missed by the fact-checker.

The Democratic Alliance (DA)

The DA is a deeply troubled party, and its position on Israel-Palestine lies at the heart of the problem. It has long made life difficult for internal dissenters, particularly those who call out the DA’s silence during successive wars on Gaza.

The fact-checkers did not address the resurfaced photograph of former DA leader Mmusi Maimane meeting Benjamin Netanyahu in 2017. Netanyahu is currently facing warrants of arrest for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Gaza from at least October 8, 2023 until at least May 20, 2024. He is accused with his then minister of defence Yoav Gallant.

The DA defended the visit, claiming Maimane sought peace by meeting both sides but at the end of the day he only met Netanyahu. Yet the Palestinian embassy in South Africa said it was never notified, questioning the DA’s true commitment to Palestinian rights and peace in the region.

In another twist rooted more in Johannesburg local politics than principle, DA mayor Herman Mashaba suspended health MMC Dr Mpho Phalatse for calling herself and the city ‘friends of Israel’.

Alexander used this case to give the DA a pass on pro-Israel sympathies. That easy exoneration fools no one; many remember the DA’s long record of silence and complicity.

However, it was the Cachalia affair that truly exposed the party.

In November 2023, DA leader John Steenhuisen removed Ghaleb Cachalia from the shadow cabinet for defying a caucus gag on speaking about Gaza.

Cachalia tweeted: ‘I will not be silenced. Israel is committing genocide. Full bloody stop.’

The DA called his conduct selfish and undisciplined. Cachalia and his supporters called it selective censorship, noting that Helen Zille remained free to defend her colonial views.

Ultimately, the DA’s effective siding with genocide drove Cachalia to resign in January 2024.

In contrast to its silence on Palestine, the DA’s support for Ukraine is loud and clear, with Steenhuisen asserting that ‘there can be no neutrals’ in that conflict. The interview took place on May 10, 2022, months before the October 2023 Hamas attacks were brought up to show the DA’s duplicity when it came to Palestine. To ignore this nuance, the fact-checkers made their misleading call as these facts did not suit their approach.

Conclusion: Facts without context are hollow

This piece is about the importance and proper place of facts.

In Charles Dickens’ Hard Times, Thomas Gradgrind demands: ‘Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life.’

In our hard times, we demand more. Yet it seems that Africa Check’s Mary Alexander followed this Gradgrind philosophy, providing a literalist check that failed to dig deeper into the cosy relationships, junkets and ideological allegiances of these parties.

Facts, we all know, are important, and for journalists and media workers they are integral to laying the foundation for accurate reporting.

The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics recommends responsibility, verification, original sources, context, accountability and giving voice to the voiceless to be up front and centre. Importantly, the SPJ Code warns that ‘neither speed nor format excuses inaccuracy’.

In the above, we have witnessed a rushed job timed to coincide with the elections, resulting in the exoneration of parties allied to Israel.

The article ignored historical and contemporary evidence of these parties’ close ties to Israel, including denial of Apartheid and genocide, and support for the Gaza war.

Fact-checking and context are essential to creating the basis for open and robust discussion. By rushing a fact-check to coincide with an election, and by ignoring the historical evidence of ‘fact-finding’ missions organised by Israeli lobby groups, the checkers effectively became part of the disinformation, misinformation and false-reporting cycle themselves.

This must not be allowed to happen again, especially since election season is once again upon South Africa.

The task of a writer is not to give any powerful political actor a ‘free pass’. Platform owners, donors, and the methodology and ethics of the researchers and journalists, are all part of the story.

The evidence – historical, contemporary and visual, as well as non-recorded interviews – shows that the parties in question have had, or continue to have, active relations with the state of Israel.

To claim otherwise is not a ‘fact-check’, but an impoverishment of our discourse.

Hassen Lorgat, trade unionist and media activist, is a member of the working group on data centres, and convenor of the CSOs Tailings Working Group. He writes in his personal capacity.