By the Editorial Board of National Security News

Phillip van Niekerk’s Right of Reply (BizNews, 03 September 2025) dismisses our reporting (“MTN’s man in Washington DC”) as a “black ops” and an “apartheid smear campaign.”

However, Mr van Niekerk’s rebuttal says everything our readers need to know about him.

Mr van Niekerk admits that the core facts of our reporting are accurate – he does indeed have an undisclosed role as a paid MTN consultant in Washington DC.

Mr van Niekerk denies he has been collecting intelligence for MTN in Washington DC, but admits he is an “analyst” who, in his own description of his services for his client, helps them “better understand the politics, the people and the geopolitics.”

Mr van Niekerk admits that he attacks President Trump’s Middle East policies without disclosing his payments from MTN, but claims he is not trying to influence policy or opinion.

Although he failed to disclose his association with MTN until NSN’s recent reporting, Mr van Niekerk now states he is “proud to be associated with MTN”, while knowing MTN is being sued by the families of 505 fallen US soldiers under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) for materially supporting terrorism. He is now all in with the MTN brand, while knowing MTN has a lucrative partnership with the Iranian military – which he himself describes as a “sworn enemy of the United States and Israel.”

MTN ties: more than “consulting”

Mr van Niekerk portrays himself as a consultant, not an MTN employee or lobbyist. This is wordplay. Whistle-blowers and former MTN executives confirm he has been paid handsomely by the company, reporting directly to MTN chairman Mcebisi Jonas. Invoices show some of his work and payments went through MTN Dubai, the division of the company that manages the group’s partnership with the Iranian Ministry of Defence.

He does not deny these payments — he simply downplays them. But when you are producing regular reports for MTN’s chairman on all the company’s markets, you are not an outside observer. You are a strategic insider. And MTN’s ties matter: its 49 per cent stake in MTN Irancell funnels profits to the Iranian Ministry of Defence and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a designated terrorist group.

Mr van Niekerk scoffs that linking him to Iran is “false.” But if you are on retainer for a company being investigated by a grand jury for its entanglement with Iran’s military, the conflict of interest is real. That is the story. He offers no transparency, only semantic dodges.

Spying denials v whistle-blower testimony

Mr van Niekerk claims he has not provided any information to the South African government, but does not deny that he regularly briefs Mcebisi Jonas, who is both MTN’s chairman and President Ramaphosa’s Special Envoy to the United States.

Mr van Niekerk ridicules our reporting that he monitored South African delegations in Washington. Yet whistle-blowers inside MTN confirm he briefed Jonas and MTN leadership on the activities of AfriForum, Solidarity, businessman Rob Hersov, and DA MPs Emma Powell and Andrew Whitfield. Mcebisi Jonas, the chairman of MTN and Mr van Niekerk’s client, has called these South Africans “treasonous” for challenging the ANC and MTN’s lucrative partnership with Iran.

He admits attending the Hudson Institute event where Powell and Whitfield spoke. A State Security Agency (SSA) report — later leaked by the South African Presidency — contained details of Powell and Whitfield’s remarks in Washington, and was used to justify Whitfield’s dismissal from Cabinet.

Mr van Niekerk denies involvement with the SSA, but it strains belief that the SSA and the Presidency magically obtained the content of events he attended. Different whistle-blowers inside MTN and the Sowetan separately identified Mr van Niekerk as the source. His client, who represents the Presidency, repeated the ANC leadership’s “treason” line against these courageous South African leaders who travelled to the US at their own cost to try to repair the relationship.

Disclosure failures

Mr van Niekerk nitpicks the articles we cited, but he concedes the most important: a November 2024 Daily Maverick commentary attacking President Trump’s Iran policy. At the time, he was, by his own admission, already consulting for MTN. Yet the piece contained no disclaimer of his MTN ties.

He argues his articles are labelled “Opinion” or “Analysis” and thus exempt from disclosure. Wrong. Readers deserve to know when a commentator on Iran and US foreign policy is also a paid adviser to a telecoms company with billions tied up in Tehran. Confidentiality to a corporate client is no excuse for deceiving the public.

He claims that “if a critique of Donald Trump’s Middle East policies is a ‘national security issue,’ more than half of the New York Times opinion-page writers would be locked up for treason.” However, he fails to understand that since he is being paid by a foreign company that is in a partnership with the Iranian military — which vowed to assassinate President Trump — his relentless attacks on President Trump and his policies, in both the written media and podcasts such as Redi Tlhabi’s show, place him in a completely different category from other US commentators.

He derides NSN for not naming sources. Protecting whistle-blowers is standard journalistic best practice, especially when MTN’s partner in Iran is a sanctioned terrorist organisation being sued for helping to kill more than 505 American soldiers. The documents, invoices, and corroborated accounts in NSN’s possession underpin our reporting.

Attacking the messenger

Unable to disprove our facts, Mr van Niekerk attacks our ownership and editorial integrity. He portrays NSN as a “sock puppet” for Andre Pienaar, an investor who is on the public record as a supporter of NSN’s reporting. He claims our report was a hit piece tied to another unrelated lawsuit. This is classic deflection.

NSN is an independent media platform with an editorial policy that reflects our independence. NSN has successfully partnered with leading news organisations in the US and UK to expose serious national security issues — including with The Telegraph, The Times and the Daily Mail in London, and Newsweek in the United States.

The bigger picture

Despite Mr van Niekerk’s denials, the facts stand: he is, by his own admission, deeply intertwined with MTN’s operations and paid by MTN; MTN is in partnership with, and funds, the Iranian military that he describes “as a sworn enemy of America and Israel”; he has moved in US policy circles without public disclosure of his paid MTN agenda (until NSN reported on this); and evidence strongly indicates information he gathered in Washington DC was used in efforts to target MTN and the ANC’s critics. Reporting these facts is in the public interest in both South Africa and the United States.

Mr van Niekerk claims our reporting is part of a campaign to “sabotage” US–South Africa relations. On the contrary, NSN’s reporting is in the interest of repairing South Africa’s essential relationship with the United States. Our reporting protects the courageous South African leaders who are being targeted by Iran’s terror regime, in collusion with the leadership of MTN and the ANC, for speaking truth to power.

The photograph of General Rudzani Maphwanya, Chief of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), shaking hands with Major-General Seyyed Mousavi, who represents MTN’s partner in Iran, cannot be mischaracterised as “black ops.” Like Mr van Niekerk, who wrote that he is all in with MTN, General Maphwanya and South African Minister of Defence Angie Motshekga said that they are all in with Iran against America and its ally, Israel.

It is the ANC and MTN’s financial partnership with the Iranian military that is sabotaging US–South Africa relations. It is the ANC’s lawfare and global lobbying against Israel, an ally of the United States, that sabotages US–South Africa relations. It is the ANC and MTN’s ties with terrorist groups like the IRGC and Hamas that sabotage US–South Africa relations.

By refusing to acknowledge even the appearance of a conflict, or the possibility of wrongdoing by MTN in Iran, Mr van Niekerk confirms why our reporting was necessary. His own rebuttal admits the core facts NSN reported — yes, he gets paid to consult and analyse for MTN on people, politics and geopolitics in Washington DC; yes, he knows that MTN’s partner, Iran, is “a sworn enemy of the US and Israel”; yes, he attended the Hudson Institute events where South African leaders spoke out against the ANC’s collusion with Iran; yes, he attacks President Trump’s policies in the Middle East in his op-eds and podcasts. What he cannot do is explain why these overlaps are benign, why disclosure was unnecessary, or why courageous whistle-blowers tell a story so different from his own.