A protest against illegal immigrants living in South Africa. Picture: Oupa Mokoena/African News Agency (ANA)
The Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change’s (CABC) latest listing has revealed that immigrants have been increasingly blamed for socio-economic issues plaguing South Africa, before the country’s national and provincial elections on May 29.
According to the CABC’s monthly Social Listening updates and recommendations for online conversations about immigrants in South Africa, the key narratives within the anti-immigrant online conversation in April, surrounded politicians’ promises to fight illegal immigration, including critique of the EFF’s pan-African stance.
Researchers noted that the conversations, which had more than 311 000 mentions from more than 61 000 authors, also had an amplification of posts from self-proclaimed news sources that reported alleged crimes committed by immigrants in South Africa.
“This speaks to the need to ‘be first’ on social media, which, in reality, translates into a large amount of mis-and disinformation proliferating online because these sources don’t have adequate journalistic protocols or screening processes in place but rather, they are often heavily biased and one-sided, engaging in confirmation bias styled ‘reporting’,” said the report.
“#PutSouthAfricansFirst has also remained among the top three, focusing on the condemnation of crimes committed by immigrants, hateful content adopting a ‘proud xenophobe’ stance boasting about holding a negative attitude towards immigrants, amplification of a story about police brutality against Zimbabwean vendors and content about fake documentation being sold to immigrants.”
Researchers said they had also picked up other key narratives and hashtags in which immigrants were the focus, including that of the disappearance of a 3-year old child from Diepsloot.
While other people used social media posts to raise awareness about the search for the child, others used the opportunity to blame immigrants for her disappearance.
Utterances by Patriotic Alliance (PA) leader Gayton McKenzie and others who patrolled the Beitbridge border under the hashtag #abahambe were also used to amplify content about Zimbabwean migrants being arrested for committing crimes.
Journalists have also come under scrutiny, among them SABC’s “Morning Live” news anchor Leanne Manas. She was taken to task recently after she asked Zimbabwean commentator and chairperson of Zimbabwe Anti-Sanctions Movement Rutendo Matinyarare, during an interview, why he did not go home to Zimbabwe if there were so many opportunities there.
“While some individuals came out strongly in critique of her, saying that a white woman should not tell a black man in Africa to go home. Others defended her, saying she is South African and remarked that as a journalist she asked relevant questions.”
Saturday Star
goitsemang.matlhabe@inl.co.za