Inflammatory social media content is driving a volatile anti-foreigner campaign in South Africa, with fringe groups demanding illegal immigrants leave by 30 June despite the deadline having no legal basis.
Thousands of foreign nationals from Ghana, Mozambique, Nigeria and Malawi have already left for border crossings as threats escalate online and at places where immigrants live or work.
“Every morning when you wake up, you see a traumatising video telling people that they’re going to kill people before 30 June,” said Tino Maclean, an activist helping Zimbabweans to leave. “You know the impact of social media these days: when people say they’re going to kill you, you can’t sleep.”
Posts circulating online include videos of men brandishing machetes, captions reading “June 30, I can’t wait” and images of the date pierced by bullet holes. Some posts label foreigners as “leeches”.
Disinformation amplifies crisis
A relatively small number of highly active accounts, influencer communities and alternative media networks generate and amplify a disproportionate share of anti-immigrant content, according to Murmur Intelligence, which analyses online material.
“The best disinformation campaign is to convince a few people that thousands are convinced,” said Aldu Cornelissen from the company.
AFP Fact Check has debunked numerous videos falsely presented as evidence of attacks on foreign nationals that were in fact filmed years earlier or in other countries. Other posts falsely claimed to show an official government announcement of the 30 June deadline using AI-generated notices bearing the national coat of arms.
Public works minister Dean Macpherson told journalists on Friday that groups and individuals were “happy to light a match on a very volatile situation and then walk away when that fire erupts”. He called on police to act.
Police spokeswoman Athlenda Mathe said intelligence officers were monitoring social media and engaging platforms where necessary.
TikTok this week banned the account of one of the movement’s most vocal leaders, Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, which had more than 378 000 followers, but her other social media accounts remained active.
Six-year build-up
Today’s anti-foreigner mobilisation reflects an ecosystem developing for years, transforming emotionally charged incidents into broader narratives that blame migrants for crime, unemployment and other state failures, according to Murmur Intelligence.
The roots included 2020 campaigns by the #PutSouthAfricaFirst movement and the radical Operation Dudula group that evolved into a “self-sustaining ecosystem” fuelled by anonymous media channels, political support and coordinated online mobilisation, co-founder Kyle Findlay said at a Johannesburg event against hate speech this week.
South Africa’s “modern xenophobic movement has been built intentionally over the past six years” but repeated warnings have “fallen on deaf ears”, he said.
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Legal challenges
South Africa’s laws prohibiting hate speech and incitement to violence mostly predate modern social media platforms, said Kimal Harvey, an attorney at the Legal Resources Centre.
The challenge is “translating the South African legal system to the online space”, he said.
In 2023 a former Operation Dudula activist was issued a fine or jail term for circulating an inflammatory anti-foreigner voice note on WhatsApp.
Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, daughter of former president Jacob Zuma, is on trial for incitement over social media posts following her father’s jailing in July 2021 which sparked unrest that claimed more than 350 lives.
ALSO READ: Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla resigns from Parliament amid trafficking charges
Experts say algorithms continue to reward emotionally charged content to the profit of companies running social media platforms.
“They are not going to self-regulate. It is too lucrative,” said Sharon Ekambaram, who heads the Refugee and Migrant Rights Programme at Lawyers for Human Rights.
Phathiswa Magopeni, chair of UNESCO’s Social Media 4 Peace coalition, said: “Algorithms decide what we get to see first. This is why outrage outperforms accuracy.”
ALSO READ: Police relocate hundreds of foreign nationals from Durban church amid anti-migrant tensions
