This South African 'economic apartheid' row isn't the first time PR firm Bell Pottinger has courted controversy

Back in 2011, an undercover investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism published in The Independent showed senior executives at the company boasting, amongst many other things, about how they could manipulate Google search results to 'drown' out negative coverage of human rights violations and child labour

(Reuters)

For all that the last half a decade has lacked in optimistic news coverage, it has certainly made up for in controversy and corporate scandal. We’ve spent months lamenting the outrageous sexism rampant across Silicon Valley. Closer to home, companies like Sports Direct, its working practices and binge-drinking boss, seem to inflame social media on a weekly basis.

UK bank bosses rotate in and out of the crosshairs of furious comment writers and an austerity-scarred public. Even Germany – traditionally somewhat of a buttress of corporate responsibility— has done its part, courtesy of Volkswagen covertly pumping toxic gasses into our lungs.

This week, however, a company explicitly tasked with defending the name of disgraced firms has found itself in its own profound mess, facing claims on social media so vicious you’d be forgiven for wondering if Bell Pottinger’s reputation can ever be salvaged at all. And perhaps it can’t.

The London-based PR firm, whose clients range from multinational businesses to governments, public sector organisations, entrepreneurs and the richest of the rich was forced to apologise, sack a partner and suspend other employees pending an investigation into a campaign critics say focused on the dominant role of businesses owned by white people in the South Africa.

The accusations pertain to Bell Pottinger’s relationship with Oakbay, a company controlled by the moneyed Gupta family of Indian-born businessmen, which has widely been accused of exerting undue influence over South African President Jacob Zuma.

On Wednesday night, the UK’s Public Relations and Communications Association, the PRCA, put out a statement saying that it was investigating a complaint from South Africa's main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, against Bell Pottinger. The DA, popular with many white South Africans, has blamed Bell Pottinger for working to “divide and conquer the South African public by exploiting racial tensions in a bid to keep Jacob Zuma and the ANC in power".

Emails leaked to the South African media appear to suggest that Bell Pottinger worked with Oakbay to create a “narrative that grabs the attention of the grassroots population” and a campaign to stress the continued “existence of economic apartheid”.

Media and civil society groups have also accused Bell Pottinger of portraying anyone opposing the Guptas and Zuma as “white monopoly capital”. Angry South Africans have taken to social media with the hashtag #bellpottingermustfall. And worse.

A corporate faux pas of this scale would be damning in any country and when committed by any business, but a blunder in a country with such a deep and painful history of racial divide is of an order of magnitude more serious. What makes the episode particularly unpalatable is the fact that when Bell Pottinger terminated its contract with Oakbay in April, it did so saying that it had been the victim of a politically motivated smear campaign and denied all wrongdoing. It painted itself as the victim, one could say.

On Thursday night, chief exec James Henderson changed his tone in a grovelling statement saying that senior management had been “misled about what has been done” and issued a “full, unequivocal and absolute apology to anyone impacted”. Insiders have described Henderson as a micromanager. Based on that, it’s hard to imagine what took him so long to respond to such a groundswell of discontent.

What makes the crisis response time perhaps even more remarkable is that Bell Pottinger is no stranger to controversy. Back in 2011, an undercover investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism published in The Independent showed senior executives at the company boasting, amongst many other things, about how they could manipulate Google search results to "drown" out negative coverage of human rights violations and child labour.

It also unveiled how willing Bell Pottinger was to work with some of the world’s most controversial regimes. The company has changed in many ways since then, but perhaps not exclusively for the better.

The 2011 investigation and the more recent developments both serve as brutal reminders of how much damage the murky, interlaced industry for lobbying and public relations can do and how ill-regulated it is. The PRCA may be a credible organisation that serves a purpose, but our system is devoid of an authority that has been able to effectively crack down on practices of this type. Before he became Prime Minister, David Cameron warned that lobbying would be "the next big scandal". That was seven years ago.

As a democracy, we do need lobbyists and public relations firms, but more than anything we need their work to be brought out of the shadows. There is a paramount requirement for transparency, honesty and accountability – in a year as emotionally charged as 2017, perhaps more so than ever before. And in the meantime, Bell Pottinger and James Henderson still have plenty of questions to answer.