Reputation defense: malicious rumours, effects & treatments

At the beginning of September 2008, a rich Cameroonian businessman defrayed the chronicle in an unexpected way. That cold and dry morning in Maroua, the local newspaper, L’oeil du Sahel, titrates: “A billionaire distributes the AIDS”! That’s the beginning of “Yaya Bello Gate”. Is this serious charge proven? The rumour does not require so much. Only the public opinion’s perception counts. The terrible scoop makes the effect of a small local cyclone. In spite of the purchase of almost all the “mortal edition” specimens by our businessman henchmen, the wine is drawn, it must be drunk.

A rumour is a social background noise which runs like “love disease in the heart of teenagers”. Non-official, it’s a true or false information you easily transmit without checking. Very appraisal within the framework of black operations, it can be the fact of isolated individuals, groups of economic interests, politicians, medias… and of course of the secret services. It can be scientifically conceived, tested and injected into hearths favourable with its expansion. It generally aims at destabilizing, destroying a moral or physical person, modifying the attitude of a target, or poisonning a competitor… Among its inputs, the most used are money, power, sex, illness and death. You can know from where it starts but never where it will stop. In  central Africa, certain media do not fear to  diffuse rumours.

Cameroon for example is an excellent site of this phenomenon experimentation. In any case indeed, justice – when it is seized- obviously acts a posteriori. Among the most insane rumours that have considerably impacted on the political actors’ reputation in the country during the twenty last years, let us quote: the Snakeman (“serpentologue”) of Cameroon Radio & Television (CRTV), 1999, the death of president Paul Biya in Switzerland, 2004, the complete listing of homosexuals in Cameroon, 2006, or the preparation of a military push in Yaounde, 2007. To date, none of those malicious operations is officially elucidated. The attack which aims Yaya Bello reinforces the thesis of the rumour tranfer -as Infowar weapon- from the sociopolitical sphere to the economic field. (Read our article: African mailing-list exploited to destabilize Coca-Cola).

With less to have an excellent network of early warning sensors in the principal “hearths of incubation” like airports & barracks, hospitals & prisons, universities & press, internet forum & mailing-list…, it is extrememely complex to drown, deviate or turn over a malevolent rumour, even less to track its author. And yet, an attack by information is enough to demolish in one day a whole life, a family, a business or a reputation. While trying to plead its own cause during an interview, without a professional coaching, Yaya Bello inserted himself as one does not wish it with anybody.

Fortunately, meticulous decoding and analysis of the 23 greatest info-destabilization attacks’ modus operandi in Cameroon, Congo, Centrafrica, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, during the 10 last years enable us today to affirm that rumour consequencies are not a fate. If it is detected and treated in time by professionals, the malevolent noise will leave very light scars, in the worst case. Another good news: our counter-offensive tactics RETOSE (Return To Sender) can produce in certain cases, irremediable effects to the author of a malicious rumour, in the respect of law, justice and ethics. Guy Gweth