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ISLAM AND GLOBAL STUDIES

Manufacturing
Terrorism in Africa
The Securitisation of
South African Muslims

Mohamed Natheem Hendricks

 Islam and Global Studies

Series Editors
Deina Abdelkader
University of Massachusetts Lowell
Wilmington, MA, USA

Nassef Manabilang Adiong

Institute of Islamic Studies
University of the Philippines Diliman
Quezon City, Central Luzon, Philippines

Raffaele Mauriello
Pelake 36
YousefAbad, Khiyabane Bisotoun
Tehran, Iran
Islam and Global Studies series provides a platform for the progression of
knowledge through academic exchanges based on multidisciplinary socio-­
political theory that studies the human condition and human interaction
from a global perspective. It publishes monographs and edited volumes
that are multidisciplinary and theoretically grounded and that address, in
particular, non-state actors, Islamic polity, social and international justice,
democracy, geopolitics and global diplomacy. The focus is on the human
condition and human interaction at large. Thus cross-national, cross-­
cultural, minority and identity studies compose the building block of this
series; sub-areas of study to which Islamic theory and socio-political praxis
can provide an alternative and critical lens of inquiry. It explores Islam in
history and in the contemporary world through studies that:

a) p rovide comprehensive insights of the intellectual developments

that have defined Islam and Muslim societies both in history and in
the contemporary world;
b) delineate connections of pre-colonial Muslim experiences to their
responses, adaptations and transformations toward modernity;
c) evaluate old paradigms and emerging trends that affect Muslims’
experiences in terms of political state system, democracy, seculariza-
tion, gender, radicalism, media portrayals, etc.;
d) show empirical cases of intra-Muslim and Muslim–Non-Muslim
relations.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/16205
 Mohamed Natheem Hendricks

Manufacturing
Terrorism in Africa
The Securitisation of South African Muslims
Mohamed Natheem Hendricks
Cape Town, South Africa

ISSN 2524-7328     ISSN 2524-7336 (electronic)

Islam and Global Studies
ISBN 978-981-15-5625-8    ISBN 978-981-15-5626-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5626-5

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect
to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Singapore Pte Ltd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-­01/04 Gateway East, Singapore
189721, Singapore
 To my late father Achmat Hendricks, mother Gouwa Hendricks and
grandfather Tape Hendricks: because I owe it all to you. May Allah have
mercy on you as you had mercy on me when I was small.
 Foreword

The publication of this book is an historic event: certainly, in the study of

Security Studies in South Africa.
This is a big claim, to be sure.
The message of the book needs to be read against the backdrop that
this field (and its root-discipline, International Relations) has always been
a white, masculine mode of enquiry. It was also bound up with another
unchallenged assumption, that Western-centred thinking on security was
embedded in the Judeo-Christian belief system.
With few exceptions, until the ending of apartheid, the pre-occupation
of those who published in the field of Security Studies in (and on) South
Africa was how to maintain a white state in Africa. Borrowing from canon,
writers in the field reinforced the then common-sensical understanding
that the security interests of the West and South Africa were one.
Indeed, during the 1970s, there was an academic cottage industry
which argued that the West had ‘legitimate’ security interests in the apart-
heid state notwithstanding that the system itself had been declared a crime
against humanity. Indeed, my own doctoral thesis, which was researched
in the United Kingdom and presented in 1980, was a product of this Cold
War approach (see Vale, 1980).
Given this, it was plain that on the ending of apartheid, the dominant
way of thinking could continue. After all, there had been no revolution by
which Western ‘interests’—security and economic—were suddenly lost.
The moment was assisted by the integration and regrouping of what
the Stellenbosch academic Willie Breytenbach famously called the

vii
viii FOREWORD

‘Securocrats’ into the post-apartheid state (Pottinger, 1998, p. x). Their

rise to authority remains one of the great untold stories of South Africa’s
transition to democracy. In these years, their writings continued to follow
the Western template of security thinking, and accordingly replicated the
West’s ‘othering’ of Muslims at the global level—even before 9/11 quick-
ened its reckless pace.
These paragraphs are essential background to the book presently in
your hands. They reinforce the notion that what the West said about secu-
rity in South Africa has mattered more than any other ideas, and very often
more than the facts themselves!
Of course, there were many, many other stories of security and its mak-
ing in South Africa. But, the very history of the country is a tale of policy
insiders who fashioned security to serve their own interests—and did so,
by the familiar binaries of ‘self’ and ‘other’.
What the book shows is that borrowing from the set routines of
Western-oriented Security Studies, the purported ‘threat posed by Muslims
gained currency in the post-apartheid state. Its endless reportage in the
press and its uncritical use by a think-tank community—often in search of
foreign funding—made it not only accepted academic knowledge but a
species of common sense, too.
These pages expose the limits of common sense and, in publishing it,
Dr Hendricks has pointed why it is that critique is essential to understand-
ing security.

Pretoria, South Africa Peter Vale

References
Pottinger, B. (1988). The imperial presidency: P.W. Botha, the first ten years.
Johannesburg, South Africa: Southern Book Publishers.
Vale, P. (1980). The Atlantic Nations ad South Africa: Economic constraints and
community fracture. PhD thesis presented to the University of Leicester, 466 pp.
 Acknowledgements

This book results from my doctoral thesis, ‘Received truth: Security,

Securitisation and South African Muslims’ at the University of
Johannesburg which was supervised by Professor Peter Vale. I have
benefited enormously from his guidance and advice.
I express a very special thanks to Anneli Botha, Hussein Solomon,
Adam Habib and Ronnie Kasrils who willingly permitted me to inter-
view them.
Thanks to all my friends who listened to my unpopular or non-­
mainstream perspectives related to the topic Terrorism and its construc-
tion in Africa and South Africa. You encouraged me to persevere and
complete this inquiry. You know who you are: Shamil Manie, Muafia
Jonas, Ighsaan Abrahams, Lucy Alaxander, Nandipha Matchanda, Achmat
and Yusuf Saloogy, Terry Volbrecht and Rahmat Omar.
I am hugely grateful to my wife, Nurjehaan Daniels, and my children,
Thaakier, Gouwa and Yusuf, who provided me with the necessary moral
and emotional support and who have tolerated me while I worked on this
publication.

ix
 Praise for Manufacturing Terrorism in Africa

“Research on terrorism remains deeply Eurocentric and there is a real gap in our
understanding of the material and discursive impact of the war on terror on Africa.
Manufacturing Terrorism in Africa provides a much-needed critical analysis of the
ways in which the war on terror discourse has come to dominate security discus-
sions in South Africa, and the important actors involved in the securitisation of
Muslims. Theoretically sophisticated, empirically rich and always interesting, this
book adds greatly to our knowledge of the globally dominant terrorism discourse
and its damaging effects on community relations and counterterrorism policy-­
making. Highly recommended.”
—Professor Richard Jackson, Director, The National Centre for Peace and
Conflict Studies, University of Otago, New Zealand

“In this timely monograph Natheem Hendricks challenges the sensationalist media
hysteria on so-called ‘Islamic terror in South Africa’. He also presents a much-­
needed corrective to a small coterie of so-called experts who spew Islamophobic
tropes about a growing ‘Islamic terror threat in South Africa’. This book is essen-
tial reading for anyone interested in an alternative perspective to the hegemonic
view that official state representatives have greater leverage in manufacturing ter-
ror over that of media and so-called counter terrorism research institutes”.
—Dr. A. Rashied Omar, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University
of Notre Dame, USA
 Contents

1 Prolegomenon: The White Widow—The Kenyan Westgate

Mall Attack  1

2 The United States: Pivotal in the Terrorism Debate in Africa 17

3 Conceptualising Securitisation 45

4 The Invisible College 59

5 Expertise, Epistemes and the Construction of a Suspect

Community 93

6 Writing Insecurity: Representations of Muslims and Islam

in the South African Print Media137

7 Conclusion177

Appendixes201

References209

Index245

xiii
 Acronyms

AEI American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

AFRICOM United States of America African Command
ARNTACT African Research Network on Terrorism and Counter Terrorism
AU African Union
BIIA British Institute of International Affairs
CDA Critical Discourse Analysis
CFR Council on Foreign Relations
CIA Central Intelligence Agency (United States of America)
CiPS Centre for International Political Studies
COIN Counterinsurgency
CS Copenhagen School
CSS Critical Security Studies
CSTPV Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence
CT Critical Theory
EU European Union
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation
FIS Islamic Salvation Front
GCTF Global Counterterrorism Forum
GLORIA Global Research in International Affairs Center
GWOT Global War on Terror
IR International Relations
ISS Institute for Security Studies
NIA National Intelligence Agency (South Africa)
OAU Organisation of African Unity
PAC Pan Africanist Congress of South Africa

xv
xvi Acronyms

PAGAD People Against Gangsterism and Drugs

PRISM Project for the Research of Islamist Movements
RAND Research and Development Corporation
RIIA Royal Institute of International Affairs
RIMA Research on Islam and Muslims in Africa
SAIIA South African Institute of International Affairs
SAP South African Police
SAPS South African Police Services
TRI Terrorism Research Initiative
UIC Union of Islamic Courts
US United States
 CHAPTER 1

Prolegomenon: The White Widow—The

Kenyan Westgate Mall Attack

This introductory chapter provides preliminary remarks which the rest of

the book discusses in more detail. It analyses a publicly aired documentary,
The Kenyan Attack, to show how terrorism knowledge and expertise are
manufactured in an era of the ‘Global War on Terror’. Above all, it aims to
illustrate that the construction of African and South African Muslims as a
societal threat is brought about by associating them with terror in a man-
ner that replicates Western discourses on Muslims and terrorism.
Confirming that knowledge and power interface in processes by which
social and moral order are constructed, this chapter draws attention to
how non-state actors, such as a terrorism ‘expert’ and the media (the
Carte Blanche documentary in his instance), participate in the political act
of constructing South African Muslims as a source of terror and contribu-
tors in global terror networks.
We now proceed to analyse, from a historical perspective, the South
African Carte Blanche documentary, The Kenyan Attack, which was aired
on 29 September 2013.
Carte Blanche is M-Net’s prime-time current affairs programme,
broadcast throughout southern Africa on a Sunday evening to over
500,000 people each week (DStv, Undated). This investigative journalistic
series, produced by Combined Artistic Production, was first aired on 21
August 1988.

© The Author(s) 2020 1

M. N. Hendricks, Manufacturing Terrorism in Africa,
Islam and Global Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5626-5_1
2 M. N. HENDRICKS

The purpose of this analysis is to show how Carte Blanche used the
documentary genre to depict and perpetuate the idea of an association
between Muslims and terrorism.
At this point it is necessary to comment on the documentary as social
practice. It is often assumed that documentaries present the truth or real-
ity in contrast to films that focus on fictional narratives. Bill Nichols’
(1991) book Representing Reality and Patricia Aufderheider’s (2007, in
Werner, 2014, p. 325) assertion that a documentary ‘tells a story of real
life, with claims to truthfulness’ reinforce such an understanding. However,
a documentary is not ideologically neutral as it has the potential to be a
political tool. In practice, power and interest are central in the production
and dissemination of a documentary. So, unlike footage collected by sur-
veillance cameras, a documentary presents the arguments and/or the
point of view of the filmmakers by combining the ‘representation of actual-
ity with the presentation of an argument or point’ (Werner, 2014, p. 325,
emphasis in original).
The presentation of the documentary, The Kenyan Attack, will be ana-
lysed here because the way the Carte Blanche team reported the context
and outcome of their investigation illustrates the main theme of this book,
namely, the processes by which the South African mainstream media and
South African-based security think-tank experts have constructed percep-
tions of Islam and Muslims as a source of subversive violence and a threat
to the safety of South African citizens.
The documentary investigated the alleged South African link to the
military attack of the ‘part-Israeli owned’ Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya,
on 21 September 2013 (Carte Blanche, 2013a, Part 1, 01:30). In this
account, a woman called Samantha Lewthwaite was said to be the leader
and/or one of the perpetrators of the attack, which was allegedly carried
out under the command of the armed Somali guerrilla group al Shabab.
According to the documentary, al Shabab attempted to overthrow the
Western-installed Somali government. Introducing Lewthwaite, Carte
Blanche informed viewers that she was a British citizen who had converted
to Islam and was married to a person called Germaine Lindsay. The narra-
tor emphasised that Lindsay was ‘one of the four bombers of the July
2005 terror attacks in London’, which killed fifty-two people and injured
‘hundreds’. It is alleged that Lindsay killed himself during the London
attacks, resulting in Lewthwaite becoming a widow. Because of this, and
her being ethnically a European, Western media nicknamed her, ‘the
White Widow’ (Potgieter, 2014, pp. 175–6).
 1 PROLEGOMENON: THE WHITE WIDOW—THE KENYAN WESTGATE MALL… 3

We must ask why it was necessary to introduce Lewthwaite as a Muslim

convert. I maintain that doing so was part of a process that constructed
Muslims as a ‘suspect community’ (Hillyard, 1973, p. 7). Germaine
Lindsay, in the Carte Blanche narration, served as so-called ‘evidence’ that
Muslims are dangerous because they have the inclination to commit ‘acts
of terrorism’. This notion of ‘terrorism’ is one that is already pervasive in
popular mythology and has been deliberately and consistently perpetuated
by media, which disseminates the prejudiced idea of an association between
Muslims and calculated acts of random violence against innocent citizens.
Before commencing with a full analysis of the documentary in question, it
is necessary to locate it within the broader frame of the idea of a ‘Global
War on Terror’.
Through his declaration that the US ‘will call together freedom-loving
people to fight terrorism’, and to conduct a ‘war against terrorism’ (Bush,
2001b, no pagination), the former US President George W. Bush declared
a global emergency. This declaration constructed the idea of ‘terrorism’ as
an existential threat to the United States and the ‘free world’ that urgently
required extraordinary actions to counter it. The Carte Blanche sequence
suggested that ‘terrorism’ became securitised (Buzan, Wæver, & de Wilde,
1998; Wæver, 2003): the ‘Speech-Act’ or the utterance of the emergency
was essential in the construction of the threat itself. This move relates to
securitisation theory, in that ‘by labelling something a security issue, it
becomes one’ (Wæver, 2004, quoted in Taureck, 2006a, p. 55). To reiter-
ate this intellectual move: ‘the utterance itself is the act’ (Wæver, 1995,
p. 55, emphasis in original). This construction, certainly theoretically, sug-
gests that any actor can securitise any and every issue. However, in actual-
ity, successful securitisation is limited to those who have the appropriate
power and capability as well as the means to construct a threat socially and
politically (Taureck, 2006a, p. 55). When ‘security’ is uttered by an appro-
priate securitising agent—say, the US President—he is also declaring a
‘special right to use whatever means necessary to block it’ (Wæver, 2003,
pp. 10–11). However, securitisation does not necessarily imply that an
issue is an objective security threat. Instead, as we have noted, it implies
that an issue has been constructed as a threat by an appropriate ‘securitiz-
ing agent’, who has articulated the nature of the threat, within the accepted
rules (Buzan et al., 1998, p. 24). According to these rules, the securitising
agent has the capability and power to construct the threat as well as the
institutional authority and means to block the constructed threat.
4 M. N. HENDRICKS

Locating the analysis of the Carte Blanche documentary in a wider dis-

course is not simply a digression into abstract understandings of securitisa-
tion; rather, a critical engagement with this discourse will permeate this
book which, to repeat, is concerned with the securitisation of Islam and
Muslims by associating African Muslims with terrorism.
We will now return to a historically contextualized analysis of the Carte
Blanche documentary which is the focus of this Prolegomenon.
Part 1 of the documentary opened with the singing of a Christian hymn
intended to symbolise the grief of Kenyans. One could ask why the grief
of Muslim Kenyans was not shown. The sense of grief was reinforced by
the narrator’s statement that Kenyans were in mourning and ‘devastated,
shattered, grief stricken, by the terrorist attack …; but as a nation they
[were] not broken’ (Carte Blanche, 2013a, Part 1, 00:07). However, the
narrator continued, ‘the situation on the ground’ is tense, with ‘scores still
unaccounted for’. An anonymous voice then appealed, both to his compa-
triots and the viewer, for people not to point ‘fingers at any religion’, since
‘(w)e are one … we Kenyans. Let us love each other, let us protect each
other’ (00: 35).
In contrast to this voice of reason and reconciliation, the ‘attackers’
were introduced as ‘terrorists’ who aimed to establish an ‘Islamic state’.
Here is a verbatim clip:

The deadly four-day siege was claimed by al Qaeda linked terrorist group, al
Shabab. Al Shabab is an Islamist militant group who is fighting to overthrow
the Somali government and establish an Islamic state. On Saturday a group
of attackers stormed the up-market, part-Israeli owned, Westgate Mall […].
(Carte Blanche, 2013a, Part 1, 1:28)

Confirming that over sixty civilians died in the ‘siege’, the documentary
suggested that the ‘Shabab terrorists’ killed indiscriminately. Carte Blanche
dramatised this by interviewing Zachary Yach, an eighteen-year-old South
African, who was in the Westgate Mall during the attack. In his recon-
struction of the course of events, Yach said that he witnessed a ‘huge
explosion’ which he experienced as a ‘gust of wind onto your face; like a
sand storm; like a huge crack; like an ear piercing sound. … For the initial
20 to 30 minutes it was just constant bomb blasts; grenades being thrown
over; … gunshots’ (interviewed on Carte Blanche, 2013a, Part 1,
1:56–2:25).
 1 PROLEGOMENON: THE WHITE WIDOW—THE KENYAN WESTGATE MALL… 5

By choosing to privilege this particular account, the documentary high-

lighted the personal and immediate dangers which individuals encoun-
tered on the scene. Simultaneously, it also allowed the investigative team
to construct al Shabab as a threat to countries beyond Kenya. By present-
ing South Africans, like Yach, as victims and/or potential victims of ‘ter-
rorism’, Carte Blanche constructed ‘terrorism’ as a threat to all South
Africans. In other words, it securitised ‘terrorism’. The implication of this
portrayal was that, since the Carte Blanche team lacked the institutional
capability and authority to block this constructed threat, the documentary
needed to convince those in power—the South African government—to
take urgent action against ‘terrorism’. Accordingly, this securitising move
should be viewed as an attempt to convince South African policymakers to
urgently block ‘terrorism’, and that dealing with this threat might involve
the South African authorities in becoming actively involved in pursuing
perpetrators of attacks like the Nairobi Westgate Mall siege. This interpre-
tation is consistent with Huha Vuori’s (2008, pp. 76–77) argument that
actors with sufficient ‘social capital’ but lacking state authority and powers
can also use securitisation moves to achieve political aims. However, in
such instances, these securitisation moves are limited to ensuring that an
issue is placed on the agenda of politicians and/or state bureaucrats con-
cerned with security policy matters.
At the time, the perspective that South Africa pursue perpetrators of
terrorism was consistent with George W. Bush’s appeal, in his September
2001 ‘Joint Session of Congress, and the American people’, in which he
declared that all nations should participate in his ‘Global War on Terror’
since ‘if this terror goes unpunished …their own cities, their own citizens
may be next. ... Terror unanswered … can bring down legitimate govern-
ments’ (Bush, 2001b, no pagination). So the attempt by the Carte Blanche
team to encourage South Africa to pursue the perpetrators of the Westgate
Mall siege was simultaneously advocating that the country become a part-
ner in the ‘Global War on Terror’ under the leadership of the US.
Informed reflection on the structure and direction of the narrative pre-
sented in this documentary reveals that Huntington’s (1993, 1996) ‘Clash
of Civilizations’ thesis was drawn on as a conceptual framework. To
explain: in 1996, as the Cold War was ending, the Harvard-based political
scientist Samuel P. Huntington argued that ‘relations between states and
groups from different civilizations will be … antagonistic’ and that Islam
and the West would be two of the primary conflicting civilisations in future
(1996, p. 183).
6 M. N. HENDRICKS

Expanding on this idea, Western and Islamic civilisations were counter-

posed throughout the Carte Blanche documentary. Western civilisation, as
we have noted, was depicted by the singing of the hymn and the voice
begging for reconciliation and love amongst Kenyans. Interestingly,
Israelis were included within the Western cohort, as was evident in the
narrator’s claim that the Westgate Mall was ‘part-Israeli owned’. This
prompts the following question: was the reference to the Israeli ownership
deliberately made to reinforce a manufactured perception that Israelis are,
generally, victims of ‘terrorism’?
In contrast to the construction of Western civilisation as ‘good’ because
its representatives prayed and called for reconciliation, the second group,
those representing Islamic civilisation, was demonised as its antithesis. For
example, it was alleged that al Shabab celebrated death and destruction
and intended establishing something different—‘the Islamic state’ (Carte
Blanche, 2013a, Part 1, 1:28).
This process of demonisation was strengthened by visual images depict-
ing al Shabab involved in military training, in combat and engaged in
shootings. The narrator was insistent that ‘it is not the first time that these
Islamist fighters have attacked countries which support African peace-­
keeping forces in Somalia’. The voice went on to say ‘on the eleventh of
July 2010, al Shabab attacked [Ugandan] spectators watching the World
Cup final in Kampala. Seventy-nine people were killed’ (Carte Blanche,
2013a, Part 1, 06: 38–58). Even though the narrator recognised that
‘Kenya invaded southern Somalia to attack al Shabab bases two years ago’
(06: 32), no attempt was made to provide a background to these events or
to situate them politically. The average viewer would therefore not have
been aware that Kenya and Uganda, in collaboration with Western mili-
tary forces, were involved in a war with al Shabab (Keenan, 2008). This
point was clarified, but only at the end of the documentary, by a Political
Studies professor, who was described as a ‘terrorism expert’ (Carte
Blanche, 2013b, Part 2, 00:54) affiliated with the University of
Witwatersrand. Responding to the interviewer, the professor noted: ‘This
is payback time for the atrocities … that the Kenyan army inflicted on
Somalis … with the assistance of the American and Europeans. The poli-
tics of the Horn of Africa, with Somalia at the heart of it, cannot be
ignored’ (interviewed on Carte Blanche, 2013b, Part 2, 8:59–9:11).
At this point it is necessary to ask why Carte Blanche identified and
presented the Political Studies professor as a ‘terrorism expert’ even
though he had never published on the subject, and his current research
 1 PROLEGOMENON: THE WHITE WIDOW—THE KENYAN WESTGATE MALL… 7

did not focus on terrorism at all. Responding to an email question about

his fields of expertise, the professor informed the author of this publica-
tion: ‘My writing is not on terrorism as such, but rather on African security
more broadly’ (personal email correspondence, 26 March 2015). By por-
traying the Political Studies professor as a ‘terrorism expert’, were the
producers of Carte Blanche not trying to provide credibility for a specific
narrative, as well as reinforcing a particular representation?
Focusing on the scholarship of the professor is not a proxy to argue that
he is unqualified to comment on issues related to African terrorism.
Instead, concentrating on his research and publication record highlights
the media’s—Carte Blanche in this instance—role of appropriating the
authority to anoint their preferred scholars as terrorism experts. The media
then continues to use such experts with the platform to make and propa-
gate knowledge claims that are consistent with their political agenda.
Further implications of this move are examined and discussed in the pages
that follow.
It is already evident that the Carte Blanche documentary, as a cultural
product, was not a neutral conveyer of information. Instead, the analysis,
thus far, suggests that this documentary, as a definer, container and carrier
of information, became implicated in the Global War on Terror (GWOT).
GWOT can be regarded as a ‘war’ of ‘images’ (Hammond, 2003, p. 23)
and a war over ideas (to win hearts and minds), since terror and risk are
abstract terms, within which ‘information becomes the war’ (Crosbie,
2014, p.103, emphasis in original). Taking sides in this war, the Carte
Blanche documentary actively became a participant and contributor to
battles that were fought in media theatres.
Earlier in this discussion, it was noted that Carte Blanche constructed al
Shabab as a threat to Western civilisation, but this line of thinking did not
end there: the associates and supporters of al Shabab were, equally, con-
structed as a threat to Western civilisation. This was clear when attention
was turned towards South Africa, where Samantha Lewthwaite, the focus
of the Carte Blanche documentary, had allegedly resided between 2008
and 2012.
The shift of focus to Samantha Lewthwaite began when the Carte
Blanche narrator asked these two leading questions:

How did Samantha Lewthwaite, a British-born, mother of three and Muslim

convert, come to be suspected of leading or, at least, being one of the shoot-
ers in the Mall attacks? And what was the 29-year-old doing in South Africa
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