How amaBhungane has redefined investigative journalism in southern Africa

This is perhaps most evident in its role not just in exposing state misconduct at the highest levels, but in ensuring those responsible have faced real, significant consequences. Muckraking journalists were instrumental in exposing former President Jacob Zuma’s alleged corruption, and their work was later used as evidence in an unprecedented inquiry into systemic graft during his nearly nine years in office.

One of the media organizations that played a vital role in investigating influence-peddling and “state capture” during Zuma’s tenure was the small independent outlet amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism.

In isiZulu, amaBhungane means “the dung beetles” — their tagline is “Digging dung, fertilizing democracy.” As co-founder Sam Sole put it in an interview: “We’re the shit-stirrers.”

The amaBhungane newsroom was set up in 2010 by Sole and Stefaans Brümmer, initially as a standalone nonprofit in the Mail & Guardian newspaper’s investigative unit. Six years later, amaBhungane fully spun off from the newspaper — setting up offices in Cape Town, Durban, and Johannesburg — and also became a GIJN member. Since then, it has broken numerous big stories and exposed the rot in various government institutions and major corporate entities.

But amaBhungane is more than a newsroom. The organization has been active on other fronts to help investigative journalists working in South Africa and regionally. It regularly spearheads legal challenges — to obtain documents or access to information but also to lobby for changes in laws that affect their work — and built a hub to help other investigative start-ups in the region with funding and editorial resources.

“We knew it would be explosive”

In 2017, amaBhungane led a unique collaboration, initiated by the independent online Daily Maverick and later joined by news website News24, to begin publishing stories — under the hashtag #GuptaLeaks — from a trove of leaked emails that changed South African history.

“I think the GuptaLeaks was a once-in-a-career opportunity,” says co-founder Sam Sole.

“We knew it was going to be massive, it was going to be explosive,” adds Susan Comrie, an investigative journalist with amaBhungane.

The leaks came from a computer hard drive of someone connected to the Guptas, a wealthy family and business associates of then-President Zuma. The trove of emails and other documents they contained provided incredible details into, among other things, massive kickbacks paid to secure state contracts.”It took months to reconstruct the money flows,” The firm went bankrupt in 2017 in the wake of the scandal.)

In 2017, amaBunghane, the Daily Maverick, and News24 won the Taco Kuiper Award, South Africa’s highest prize for investigative journalism, for their work on this topic, and GIJN’s Global Shining Light Award in 2019.

A commission of inquiry into corruption was later set up after Zuma was forced by his party to resign from office in 2018. It was headed by Judge Raymond Zondo, who made use of journalists’ findings during the hearings. “The work of the inquiry I chair would have been much more difficult had it not been for the investigative journalists and whistleblowers. We are indebted to them,” Zondo said in 2022.

“A scary time”

The stories had an enduring impact. Companies involved collapsed after the expose; others were slapped with huge fines. An arrest warrant and an Interpol red notice were issued for the Guptas, who have since fled South Africa.

Reporter Comrie recalls the excitement and trepidation at amaBhungane when they first realized what the leaks on the hard drive were. She said her colleagues even considered leaving the country to protect their safety, though they ultimately decided to stay. However, they bought new laptops so they could process it safely offline.

“We were genuinely very worried that if it was known that we had the information that there would be attempts to seize the information, to harm us, to intimidate us,” she explains. “That was quite a scary sort of time for everyone.”

Asked about her proudest moment as a journalist, Comrie says that while seeing Zuma step down was extraordinary, she said the impact of the team’s reporting on corrupt multinational corporations “was sort of a sweeter moment for me.”

For his part, co-founder Sole says he’s very proud of how the different media outlets collaborated. “We pulled together and produced an incredible body of work.”

Data leaks, legal challenges

Last year, the group began publishing a series of stories based on another data leak, this time involving an influential South African businessman, his company, and politically connected individuals in suspicious money-moving practices. When the businessman went to court to get a gag order to force the return of the leaked documents — claiming they were “stolen” — the Constitutional Court ultimately ruled in amaBhungane’s favor, giving the country’s press corps an important victory.

This had followed another notable legal win: After learning that state security operatives had secretly listened to Sole’s phone conversations, amaBhungane filed a landmark challenge against South Africa’s surveillance law, or Rica, and the bulk surveillance and interception of journalists’ communications they said it enabled. In 2019, a court ruled in favor of amaBunghane and declared several Rica provisions unlawful. In 2021, the country’s Constitutional Court upheld the ruling, dismissing an appeal by the Minister of Police and the State Security Agency.

Difficult media landscape

Despite these successes, Sole says he thinks journalists are having to operate in an increasingly hostile environment. In addition, he believes it’s now harder to choose what to investigate than during the years Zuma was in office.

“I think the level of corruption and dysfunction and organized crime has grown. It’s much harder to decide — given our limited resources — where we put our efforts,” he explains.

The state of the media industry, beset by job losses and newspaper closures, is also a problem. Investigative outlets like amaBhungane rely on that “feed-stock,” he explains, noting that they first got wind of a corruption story about a dairy farm from a small-town newspaper. It later became a national scandal.

“You need a whole media ecosystem; you need boots on the ground, you need people covering City Hall, etc, and that whole system is broken,” Sole warns.

That’s why amaBhungane strives to be more than just a newsroom. The organization has been active on other fronts to help investigative journalists in the region. As detailed above, it regularly spearheads legal challenges — to obtain documents or access to information but also to lobby for changes in laws that affect their work — and built a hub to help other investigative start-ups in the region with funding and editorial resources.

To maintain its independence, amaBhungane does not take any money from governments or corporations, relying on funding in the past from the Open Society Foundation and other charitable organizations. Around a quarter of its funding also comes from donations from individuals and family trusts, according to Sole.

It has an annual budget of roughly 10 million South African rand (USD $500,000), which is a relatively small amount based on its output and the threats it can face. (At least 1 million rand was spent on legal fees in its recent fight against the gag order.) And amaBhungane’s publishing partners always get the site’s content for free, but agree to take shared responsibility for any legal bills.

In total, amaBhungane has a staff of 12, including four investigative reporters, two fellows, and an advocacy coordinator who handles the behind-the-investigations work of fighting for access to information rights, such as filing FOI requests, handling appeals when requests for documents they’re entitled to by law are refused, and chasing responses.

Currently, the advocacy coordinator is trying to force a liquidated German-South African firm at the center of one of South Africa’s biggest corporate scandals to release a forensic analysis of the company’s collapse.

In 2019, amaBhunganelaunched a new initiative — now named the IJ Hub —  to help investigative start-ups in the region secure funding by centralizing the fundraising and grant process. After incubating the hub for two years, amaBhungane spun it off into a separate entity and is now one of seven IJ Hub member centers, including other outposts in ​​Zambia, Malawi, Namibia, Lesotho, eSwatini, and South Africa.

Legacy of state capture

Currently, much of amaBhungane’s coverage focuses on subjects like the illicit gold trade and industrial-scale money laundering, as well as the incursion of organized crime into infrastructure projects, such as how local-level corruption is leading to the collapse of the country’s water and wastewater infrastructure.

Comrie says all of these things have their roots in the damage caused by state capture, which has allowed everyone “from organized crime kingpins to small-scale grifters” to operate with impunity. “We’ve gone from a small circle of bad guys who captured the state to a plethora of bad guys who are trying to capture everything in sight,” she explains.

Reggy Moalusi, director of the South African National Editors’ Forum, says the country’s democracy is better off thanks to amaBhungane. “The group of investigative journalists have done incredible work that has not only exposed the rot, but made sure those they expose face the music,” he says.

Anton Harber, longtime Wits University professor, former GIJN board member, and author of a book on how South African media exposed state capture, echoed this praise, saying amaBhungane’s impact on the region has been immense.

“They have been relentless and courageous in their pursuit of corruption and bad governance at every level (public and private sector) and have made a real mark on this society,” Harber says. “Importantly, they also pioneered in this part of the world the idea of an independent specialist unit, and these are now proliferating and playing a critical role in filling the gaps as our traditional media shrinks.”