19 July 2022

To whom it may concern,

RE: Article on New Frame closure and Singham

I am writing to you concerning an article that amaBhungane intends on

publishing on the abovementioned topic.

As a supplement to earlier questions and perhaps a way of sharpening and

clarifying the issues, we set out some observations below for your response.

As you are likely to be named in the article, please pay particular attention to
sections that deal specifically with yourself.

The influence of money in our politics is an area of interest to amaBhungane

because of the ways in which the democratic process can be abused or even
hijacked.

It was for that reason that in 2018 we looked into and published a
story – Numsa cornered by capital? – alleging that Khandani Msibi used his
position at the Numsa Investment Company (NIC) and its financial resources to
gain political influence in Numsa, pushing both the union and Jim, its general
secretary, closer towards the Zuma faction.

At that time, we were also interested in the role of Roy Singham in funding and
influencing Numsa or key players clustered around Jim. Partly because of clarity
and reassurances we received, we dropped that aspect of the story.

The closure of New Frame – and especially the manner of its execution –
prompted us to look again at Singham and his network, of which New Frame is
clearly a part.

The reasons for this are not complicated. The funding structure of New Frame is
extremely opaque, which always raises legitimate questions of public interest,
whether about New Frame or NewLines.

Questions about influence and independence are even more important in a world
where misinformation and sponsored news and opinion have been weaponised.
While Richard Pithouse has made a plausible case for its editorial independence,
the picture that emerges from our investigation suggests New Frame sits within
a political network of individuals and entities that is very much aligned to Numsa
– and Jim in particular – and, more broadly, to a set of organisations and
individuals engaged in a much less independent project, with distinctly
propagandist elements and some worrying links to foreign state actors.

This picture, the abrupt manner of New Frame’s closure and the reluctance to
disclose more detail about it – all suggest that New Frame was hostage to its
main funder, that its failure over a long period to diversify its funding was a
feature, not a bug, and that when it came to be regarded as less useful politically,
it was deliberately killed, rather than being given the chance to gain real
independence.

This is obviously problematic with respect to the media ecosystem in South

Africa and with maintaining media diversity, especially with respect to the ideal
of an outlet that is both editorially credible and sympathetic to the left.

Let us show you what this network looks like from the outside.

We start with the Centre for Pan African Media (CPAM) which we understand
trades as New Frame. It has three directors: Neo Bodibe, Tariro Takuva and
Richard Pithouse.

Bodibe

Ms Bodibe has deep links to Numsa and Jim. According to her LinkedIn profile
she served as Strategic Support to the General Secretary from July 2014 to March
2017. She was a director of NIC and chair of 3SixtyLife until January this year.
She is a director of four seemingly linked entities that include CPAM – all of
which are registered at the CPAM address in Braamfontein. The other three are
The Cultural Forge, The Tricontinental Pan Africa, and Isivuno Exports.
She is currently the GM employee relations at Transnet.

Takuva

According to her LinkedIn profile Ms Takuva was Thoughtworks Head of

Operations from January 2017 to May 2018 and head of Finance from November
2015 to December 2016.
Thoughtworks was of course the company founded by Roy Singham that he sold
to London-based private equity firm, Apax Funds, in August 2017.
Her profile states that since June 2018 she has been “Chief Operations Officer” of
“various entities”.
These appear to include CPAM, The Cultural Forge, The Tricontinental Pan Africa
and, since 2020, Pan Africa Today and Common Ground PA.

Pithouse

Pithouse is a director of CPAM and The Cultural Forge. On the website of the
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
(https://thetricontinental.org/institutes/) on the tab for “Institutes and
Partners” Pithouse is described as “coordinator” in the South Africa section.
He was married to Vashna Jagarnath, who is a director of both Pan Africa Today
and Friends of the Workers, both registered at CPAM’s Southpoint address. On
the website of The Conversation, in a post dated 2015, she is described as
“Strategic Support for Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party in the Office of the
General Secretary of Numsa” and “a Coordinator in Tricontinental South Africa
[thetricontinental.org]”. More recently in a June 2022 article for Daily Maverick
she is described as Deputy General Secretary of the Socialist Revolutionary
Workers' Party.”

The next level of this network is also somewhat illuminating.

The Tricontinental Pan Africa

Phakamile Hlubi is a director. She is the Numsa spokesperson and was an

electoral candidate for the SRWP in 2019.

Kate Janse van Rensburg resigned as a director in 2019. She was also a SRWP
candidate.

Mikaela Erskog resigned as a director in 2019, but she remains a director of

Isivuno Exports.
Her twitter profile describes her as “African educator &
researcher @tri_continental. Member of peace platform @NoColdWar & research
collective @DongshengNews.”
She is also quoted as a spokesperson for SRWP and has fronted for a number of
pro-China interventions, such as the Codepink-promoted event “Towards A
Multipolar World: An International Peace Forum” in 2021
(https://www.cutthepentagon.org/nocoldwar), “A closer look at China in Africa”
(https://www.codepink.org/11822) and the event held at the Forge on Africa
Day this year that included Phillip Dexter, Vijay Prashad, Fred M’membe and
Kwezi Pratt.

This latter event was also promoted by Dexter’s PAIS as recently as Thursday in
a rather embarrassing compilation video entitled “Busting the Myth of Chinese
Neo-Colonialism in
Africa”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srTiI_REznk&t=5s.

Common Ground

We understand this to be one of the funding vehicles for New Frame.

Takuva’s co-directors are Kayla Jacob and Jo Lane Anderson-Figueroa. We
understand that Jacob works for another company in South Africa, Gspan, of
which Anderson-Figueroa is the sole director.

Anderson-Figueroa is important in unpacking the wider network linked to

Singham. Like Singham, she is of Jamaican heritage. In 2009 she was the
recipient of a Chinese government sponsorship to complete her master’s degree
at Jilin, a leading university under the direct jurisdiction of China's Ministry of
Education. Her thesis was titled, “The win-win partnership between China and
the Caribbean after the cold war.”

Anderson-Figueroa also serves or served as the secretary of the People's Support

Foundation, which is understood to be one of Singham’s funding vehicles.

After 2017, several members of Thoughtworks senior staff began to work for
the People’s Support Foundation, founded by Singham's partner Jodie Evans with
the support of Chad Wathington, Thoughtworks’ chief strategy officer, and Jason
Pfetcher, Thoughtworks’ former general counsel. Evans was a co-founder of the
women's anti-war activist organization Code Pink.

According to US tax filings for 2019, the PSF has assets of $156,393,895 and
distributed $12,218,487 in charitable disbursements that year, including
$300,000 to CPAM (New Frame) and $240,000 to Pan Africa Today.

As NewLines previously reported, a large portion of the grants disbursed by PSF

has gone to the New York-headquartered United Community Fund. It is run by
Franziska Kleiner, the former social and economic justice lead of the German
subsidiary of Thoughtworks, the Singham-founded IT company.

In 2019, the treasurer of UCF was Renata Porto Bugni and the secretary was
Tings Chak. That year, filings show, reported that UCF distributed some
$700,000 to Tricontinental Ltd, another US based non-profit, where Bugni was
the deputy executive director and Vijay Prashad the executive director.

In 2021, Indian media reported that India's Enforcement Directorate named

Singham in a money laundering case against Indian media portal Newsclick and
its People's Dispatch website, alleging that he was "the key source of Rs 38
crore" (approximately US$5 million) it received between 2018 and 2021,
allegedly to promote a pro-Chinese narrative in the Indian media

The funds were alleged to have passed through a network of companies and
NGOs including Delaware-based Worldwide Media Holdings (allegedly owned by
Singham), and the Justice and Education Fund, GSPAN LLC and Tricontinental
Ltd in the US, and Centro Popular Demidas, Brazil.

India’s ministry of home affairs notified banks to flag NGO donations from these
companies in terms of India’s Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act.

Perhaps ironically, some of these connections were first explored by

Fashbusters, an anti-fascist website – or at least purporting to be so.
See: https://fashbusters.wordpress.com/2021/11/02/does-goldman-sachs-
fund-the-peoples-forum-psl-codepink-aipac-and-vijay-prashads-
tricontinental/#more-1298

Tricontinental

On its website Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research describes itself as “a

network of research institutes in the Global South” including in Argentina, Brazil,
India, and South Africa, noting that “We are a partner organisation of the
International Peoples’ Assembly, a growing network of more than 200 political
and social organisations from around the world.”

To come full circle we should have regard to the report of a solidarity visit by the
representatives of the trade union movement of the former DDR (East Germany)
to South Africa in June 2018.

The German report of the visit is to be found

here: https://www.gewerkschaften-in-
deutschland.de/app/download/7259277911/S%C3%BCd+Afrika+report-kurz-
dt.pdf?t=1646567276

The delegation that came together included various senior officials from the
former DDR as well as Vashna Jagarnath (representing SRWP, Numsa and
Tricontinental), Jonis Ghedi-Alasow (Director of Pan Africa Today), Franziska
Kleiner (Pan Africa Today), Manolo Enrique De Los Santos (a researcher with
The Tricontinental), Florentine Oehme (described as providing “support”) and
Roy Singham (People Support Foundation, Peoples’ Assembly).

Kleiner, as we have seen, runs the United Community Fund.

The document reflects that “Roy Singham introduced the International Assembly
of Organizations and Movements of Peoples Working to Rebuild an International
Movement to Fight Against capitalism and imperialism. "The first assembly will
be held in Venezuela in February 2019. We hope some of you will be able to
attend."

Under the heading “Further Projects” the documents noted “e) Roy's invitation to
the next Chinese Communist Party Congress”.

The People’s Support Foundation (PSF), was co-founded by Evans of Codepink

(Roy’s partner).

As NewLines noted, “De Los Santos is a co-director at The People’s Forum, and
the organization’s operations manager, Rita Henderson, also holds the position
of director at Tricontinental, according to the organization’s 2019 Form 990
filings. Henderson’s bio on The People’s Forum states that she sits on the board
at Tricontinental. In yet another overlap in personnel, Evans serves as a co-
director and secretary of The People’s Forum.”

The article also revealed, “Housed within The People’s Forum New York office is
yet another media organization called Breakthrough News. Also pressing Uyghur
genocide denial, this project is spearheaded by Rania Khalek, an apologist for
Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whose previous media ventures, Redfish and
Soapbox, were both exposed by journalists as cut-outs of Russian state-funded
media. Soapbox’s parent group, Maffick, sued Facebook for libel in the U.S.
District Court in California after the social media company labelled its
subsidiaries “Russia state-controlled media.” But the case was dismissed,
because the court agreed that Facebook “tendered a substantial amount of
evidence in support of its view that Maffick is linked to the Russian government.”

As recently as July 7, Prashad’s apologia for China expanded to encompass one of

Putin’s key talking points on integration with Europe, under the heading, “The
United States Wants to Prevent a Historical Fact – Eurasian
Integration”: https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/eurasian-
integration/

Prashad and the China connection

Prashad appears to be one of the most influential individuals within the Singham
network of organisations and an important link to the Chinese state and
communist party (the party-state). He has consistently parroted the official
talking points and propaganda of the Chinese state and party, and to an
apparently lesser extent Russian nationalist narratives, through Tricontinental
and the multitude of other publications and platforms linked to Singham and his
network.

Prashad and the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies

Prashad is associated with the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, a think
tank affiliated with Beijing’s Renmin University, which cannot be said to be at
arm’s length from the party-state. The Institute bills itself as a “new style think
tank with Chinese characteristics”.

It’s website states that the Institute was “ designated as the joint coordinating
think tank by the Chinese government for the T20 2016 Summit, the secretariat
of Green Finance Committee (GFC) of China Society of Finance and Banking, the
executive director of the Chinese Think Tank Cooperation Alliance for the ‘Belt
and Road’ [the centrepiece of China’s foreign policy], and the leading think tank
to jointly build ‘Belt and Road’ through the cooperation of the official and
academic organizations between China and Iran.”

The institute is, evidently, embedded in Chinese officialdom. Tellingly, it recently

hosted an event with Chinese state and party entities, including the People’s
Government of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and the State Council
Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, also known as the Central
Propaganda Department, an important organ in the state propaganda machinery
of the CCP.

Attendees and speakers at the forum included government officials like Jiang
Jianguo, Vice Minister of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of
China (CPC), representatives of Chongyang, and two members of the
Tricontinental Institute.

A write-up of the event shows that it was, predictably, a sanitised affair which
uncritically promoted the Chinese government line on Xinjiang and entirely
elided any mention of the persecution of Uighurs.

Prashad has been a consistent and forceful proponent of the Chinese nationalist
narrative that downplays serious rights abuses as merely being Western
propaganda – his talks and writing appearing consistently on the websites and
pages of entities that Singham funds or which form part of the network bolstered
by his funding. A key figure associated with him is one Li Bo.

Prashad and Li Bo

Li Bo is an academic who has been listed as a representative of Tricontinental in

China. Li Bo is the executive director of Shanghai Chunqiu Institute for
Development and Strategic Studies, assistant dean at the China Institute of Fudan
University, and the academic representative of the Guancha Syndicate.

All three organisations are of interest here, and appear to be part of an

ecosystem of Chinese propaganda linked to the party-state.

Guancha

Guancha has been described as a popular and influential online news portal with
an overtly Chinese nationalist line. The portal has been referred to in a Reporters
Without Borders (RSF) study titled “China’s Pursuit of a New World Media
Order” as a Chinese propaganda outlet. Guancha, according to the study,
promoted false news claiming that the Taiwanese government had done nothing
to help Taiwanese citizens trapped by Typhoon Jebi in Japan, and that the
Chinese government had to step in to rescue them. The report allegedly triggered
protests against President Tsai Ing-wen, whose party is opposed to
reproachment with China. Guancha’s report was later shown to be false.

The RSF study reads: “Beijing had been involved, but in another way: it seems to
have been responsible for the initial false report, as part of a carefully
coordinated and extremely effective disinformation campaign. The Taiwanese
authorities established that the initial report came from a ‘content farm’ in
mainland China. Posted on the sites of Chinese propaganda media such as Global
Times and Guancha.cn and on the Taiwanese social media site PTT, the report
was then picked up and amplified by the Taiwanese media without being fact-
checked.”

Well-known Chinese venture capitalist Eric Li is one of the co-founders of

Guancha. Eric Li rose to public prominence as an ardent proponent of Chinese
nationalism and apologist for China’s authoritarian system.

Jin Zhongwei is variously described as Guancha’s co-founder, CEO, and editor-in-

chief.

China Institute and Chunqiu

Prashad’s colleague Li Bo works alongside Eric Li and Zhongwei at Fudan’s China

Institute, where Eric Li is chair of the advisory committee and Zhongwei is a
senior fellow.

Fudan University was recently the subject of controversy after reference to

“academic independence and freedom of thought” was removed from its
constitution and a "pledge to follow the Communist party's leadership" was
enshrined.
Interestingly, among the fifteen or so fellows at the China Institute is Alexander
Dugin, the ultranationalist ideologue who is said to have laid the ideological
groundwork for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and whose views have been
described as “fascist”.

The institute’s director is Zhang Weiwei – a prominent political scientist close to

the Chinese government. Weiwei is also a fellow at the Chunqiu Institute, where
Eric Li is vice president and Li Bo is director.

It is worth noting that Singham, in another sign of direct involvement in this

network of Chinese state-party influence, sent an email to the staff of the various
organisations he is associated with, in which he implores “everyone” to attend a
lecture by Li Bo, who he refers to as “a very good friend of mine here. I deeply
respect him and he is a serious comrade!”

Singham and China

Singham has somewhat of a global footprint, but has lived in China for a few
years now, and is rumoured to have left the US after running into trouble with
authorities in that country.

While Singham’s ideological affinity for Maoism, the Chinese Communist Party
and the Chinese model of development appears to be both genuine and
longstanding, in recent years his own material interests have become
increasingly dependent on China. He either owns, partly owns, or is otherwise
involved in a number of companies domiciled in China. These appear to include
Beijing Jieshida Business Consulting, Shanghai Shiyitai Trading, Shanghai
Luoweixing Business Consulting, and Gondwana Food.

At the same time, it would appear that the organisations Singham funds globally
and in South Africa have pivoted towards all out, uncritical support for the
Chinese party-state. This pro-China push appears to be relatively recent – the
suggestion being that as Singham has become increasingly embedded in the
Chinese establishment, the organisations of which he is a benefactor have come
under pressure to fill various propagandistic roles for the party-state in China.
This is enabled by his apparently active involvement in the organisations he
funds.

Singham’s hands-on role in the organisations he funds

There appear to be flimsiest of boundaries in place between the funder and

recipient organisations. Singham’s interventionist style is highlighted by
allegations that, for example, he personally interviewed someone for a role at
New Frame, and attempted to insert himself in Numsa and the Brazilian
movement MST by either getting information from closed meetings or gaining
access to such meetings.

Although there are ostensibly independent boards in place within the

organisations in Singham’s network and the vehicles that are used to fund them,
as has been shown above, these are run by a coterie of people – many of them
directly connected to, and arguably beholden to Singham – whose directorships
within the Singham network overlap. On top of this, the almost total opacity of
Singham’s funding only enables him to exert his influence in unaccountable
ways.

Numsa, Jagarnath and PAIS

It is instructive to look to the example of Numsa, where Singham is alleged to

have made inroads into the union through Thoughtworks, enabling him to
eventually exercise some level of direct influence over the union.

Thoughtworks was officially brought in to act as a kind of management

consultancy, assisting Numsa with a membership survey and updating the
union’s systems for managing memberships and subscriptions and the like.
Thoughtworks paid for certain people to be seconded to Numsa, where, once
ensconced, they would effectively become an extension of his influence.

One individual working at Numsa on Thoughtworks’ payroll was Jagarnath, who

has become a key player in the Singham network and, of late, appears to be an
important part of the pivot towards China.

Jagarnath is a close confidante of Jim, and was mentioned in a Deloitte

investigation into a subsidiary of the Numsa Investment Company as having
received money from the company to pay for alcohol for Jim’s birthday party.
Jagarnath’s role in the Singham network has been detailed earlier in this letter,
but it is worth honing in on a relatively new organisation she is involved with,
the Pan-African Institute for Socialism, which potentially brings a new player
into the Singham network – Phillip Dexter.

PAIS was set up by Jagarnath and Dexter in recent months, after other
organisations in the Singham network began turning up their pro-China rhetoric.
PAIS appears to be well within the orbit of Singham’s network.

Dexter has been a longtime proponent of the Chinese government and its model
of development, and was a key member of the Africa-China Friendship
Association. He appeared alongside Prashad and Fred M’membe of the Socialist
Party of Zambia (which Mr Singham funds) at the event referred to earlier in this
letter, that was hosted at The Forge, and sponsored by the International People’s
Assembly, Pan-Africansim Today, and Tricontinental (all of which are part of the
Singham network).

Conclusion

To bring this matter back to New Frame, the publication was presented as an
independent left-wing media organisation, but the picture set out above is at
odds with that, and suggests that it lies firmly within a dense network built
around Singham where the boundaries between the various entities in the
network are highly permeable.

It would appear that Singham’s patronage and reach of influence extends deep
within Numsa, its party offshoot the SRWP, and the constellation of thinktanks
and civil society organisations built around the union.

And there is, at the very least, the suggestion of an alliance of interests with the
Chinese communist party and other state actors that has influenced the political
direction of this network. While not dispositive, this cannot simply be dismissed
as a mere “conspiracy theory”.

In this context, Pithouse’s claims about the readership failures of New Frame
being the primary driver of its funding crisis are frankly not persuasive.

To quite the Daily Maverick summary:

“The fact that New Frame’s limited circulation was suddenly being cited as
the reason for its closure was intensely frustrating to staffers, who say they
had repeatedly attempted to engage editorial on potential ways to raise the
site’s profile. One journalist told Daily Maverick that not only did staff point
out that low readership would make it difficult to win future funders if that
became necessary, but there was also personal unhappiness about the fact
that work which had been laboured over was being read by such a small
audience.

Readership figures seen by Daily Maverick confirm that in recent months

some of the site’s top five most-viewed stories were failing to attract even
1,000 pairs of eyes.

Accone says that despite the frequent assurances from Pithouse that the
Singham money tap was in no danger of being turned off, more experienced
members of the newsroom worried from the start about the wisdom of
relying entirely on a single donor.
 “The reporters raised this issue at meetings a number of times,” Accone told
Daily Maverick.

Majavu’s Facebook post continued: “Certain executive managers at New

Frame refused, over many months, numerous offers from staff to identify
potential funders, speak with our contacts in funding agencies and write
funding proposals, market the site, consult experts in marketing, write up
the impact reports that other news sites provide to funders (tracking
republishing etc), and suggest ways to make it possible for working class
and data-impoverished readers to access the site. There was never a
marketing or distribution plan at New Frame at any point in the last four
years.”

In a staff meeting earlier this year, Pithouse told employees that he

“wouldn’t be able to show his face” [in certain circles] if he accepted
additional New Frame funding from sources he considered either
ideologically impure or high-risk in terms of potential editorial
interference.”

As pointed out before, some of Pithouse’s senior staff considered the belated
attempts to source funding as a “box-ticking exercise”.

Accone’s conclusion is worth repeating: “I was sold an independent media

project that proved to be an indentured political project.”

Given Pithouse’s refusal so far to answer questions about the exact channels and
contractual arrangements through which New Frame was funded and managed,
about who ultimately took the decision to terminate the funding, and about their
reasons for doing so and for not permitting a measured process whereby
alternative funding could be sourced, the conclusion reached by Accone appears
to be unanswered because it is unanswerable.

Thank you for your time. If there is anything you would like to add, please do so.

Kindly acknowledge receipt of this letter and respond by close of business on

Thursday.

Sincerely,
Micah Reddy