Ferial Haffajee: On hate, hope and holding the line for media freedom

style="font-weight: 400;">vicious disinformation campaigns targeting her during the State Capture years, Haffajee described how early deep fakes were weaponised to discredit her.

“So I would wake up to scrolls of myself in Johan Rupert’s bed, on his lap, being walked like a dog. It was very early deep fake stuff. So it was gross and poorly put together, but it was still extremely hurtful.”

She says experiences like that made her reconsider the toll of editing on her life, warning that for women the thin line between abuse online and violence in the real world can be crossed frighteningly fast. 

“There was recently an advocate acting on behalf of the SA Revenue Service. She was shot. There was a prosecutor killed in a hit in July in Gqeberha. There’s obviously the case of the whistleblower Babita Deokaran.”

Politically Aweh recently covered the growing issue of online misogyny in a deep dive into the “manosphere” — a network of influencers and spaces online that promote masculinity, misogyny and opposition to feminism.

Haffajee says freedom of expression has guardrails, but censorship is not the answer. Instead, she advocates for independent and self-regulatory systems.

“I have got into trouble with the Press Council and have had to have made apologies more times than I am comfortable with. To show you that you need systems of hopefully self-regulation, independent regulation. What you don’t want is the big state determining what can be said and what can’t be said.”

Media freedom

KG, never shy of a provocation, posed the big one: would media freedom not be a small price to pay if South Africa could become as successful as China, but Haffajee’s response was an unequivocal “No!”

Haffajee is as worried about AI as she is about authoritarianism. She sees the relationship with Big Tech as a double-edged sword: it has enabled platforms like Politically Aweh to make content cheaper and easier to distribute, but its unchecked growth has also led to an unfair playing field for local media. Regulators must push Big Tech to pay its fair share.

The conversation turned to South Africa’s political and democratic trajectory under the Government of National Unity (GNU). She has spent many years reporting on State Capture and the destruction of the state.

“To suggest that everything’s okay? Not at all. But what I want to show is that we’re in a much better place, and that what it requires is momentum. And how do you encourage momentum? By people being active, ‘aweh’ citizens.”

Finally, the inevitable question, KG wanted to know if she’s ever been bribed? Sadly no one has ever tried, but what she loves about her tribe is that they’re unbribable.

It was the kind of sharp, witty exchange that characterises both Politically Aweh and Haffajee herself: always holding the line, always finding humour in the absurd, and always pushing South Africans to face uncomfortable truths.

And that, legend or not, is why South Africa still needs Ferial Haffajee.

To watch Politically Aweh’s previous podcast interview from the 2025 Daily Maverick Gathering with investigative journalist Pieter-Louis Meyburgh, click here. DM

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