PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA – MARCH 09: Community groups march against poverty, and xenophobia to the Union Buildings on March 08, 2017 in Pretoria, South Africa. The march was organised by the Coalition of Civics Against Xenophobia, which describes itself as a coalition of South Africans and foreigners living in the country. (Photo by Gallo Images / Thapelo Maphakela)
PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA – MARCH 09: Community groups march against poverty, and xenophobia to the Union Buildings on March 08, 2017 in Pretoria, South Africa. The march was organised by the Coalition of Civics Against Xenophobia, which describes itself as a coalition of South Africans and foreigners living in the country. (Photo by Gallo Images / Thapelo Maphakela)
The hashtag #23SeptemberCleanSA is trending on Twitter on Tuesday, with rhetoric being employed by dozens of Twitter accounts appearing to directly stoke xenophobia as the PutSouthAfricansFirst movement plans to march to the Nigerian and Zimbabwean embassies on Wednesday to demand that foreign nationals be deported.
The group behind the call to protest has been identified by researchers at the university of Cape Town (UCT) as having been largely responsible for a spike in xenophobic rhetoric being shared on social media over the last few months.
Xenophobia being promoted on Twitter
The Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change (CABC) at UCT said earlier in September that their research into social cohesion during the nationwide lockdown had revealed a disturbing surge in xenophobic comments, and they all seemed to point to the same “coordinated army of accounts” who use the #PutSouthAfricansFirst hashtag.
“This amplification was due to 80 accounts that were responsible for around 50% of the use of the hashtag,” said Associate Professor Camaren Peter, the director and executive head of the CABC.
“This indicated that the conversation was not growing organically but was being amplified by a coordinated network.”
Peter added that the accounts appear to be run by actual individuals or teams, as opposed to bots like the ones used when British public relations firm Bell Pottinger ran a campaign to stoke racial tension in South Africa at the behest of the Gupta family.
‘Xenophobia promoting’ #PutSouthAfricaFirst group call for action
Many of the accounts associated with the disturbing hashtag have circulated a call to action from the group’s anonymous leaders on Tuesday, in which “South Africans are called to join hands in protest against criminal activities that have engulfed our country”. The group have vehemently maintained that soaring unemployment, rampant crime and the theft of state infrastructure is the work of foreign nationals.
“We request the honour of your presence in the upcoming march to deliver a Memorandum of demands to the Nigerian and Zimbabwean Embassies requesting the repatriation of their citizens, majority of whom happen to be illegal immigrants in violation of the Immigration Act,” they said in a statement.
They cited the Commission for Employment Equity Report on annual employment figures for the 2019/20 year, and said that the report acknowledges that “illegal immigrants” are hired preferentially despite the fact that such jobs are legally reserved fr the Citizens under the Employment Services Act and other labour laws.
In fact, the report made no mention of “illegal immigrants”, but did acknowledge a rising trend in preferential employment for foreign nationals applying for entry-level jobs.
“We are extremely concerned about the state of our country and the safety of women and children who are the most vulnerable victims of the criminal activities which have skyrocketed over the years to alarming levels due to deliberate porous borders which continue to absorb international criminals,” they said. “The severely under-staffed South African Police Service (SAPS) is unable to maintain law and order.”
Group blame SA’s issues on foreigners
They said that the following issues will be raised in their list of demands, and said that they want to “deport the immigrants”.
- Human trafficking and sex slavery syndicates;
- Railway infrastructure looting;
- Drug peddling;
- Violent crimes including the scourge of farm murders;
- Hijacking buildings and houses for criminal purposes.
“We would like to urge South Africans of all races and backgrounds to join the march in a bid to fight for our country. It is our responsibility to make our nation a better place,” they said.
Mashaba distances himself from xenophobic group
One person of credibility who has been actively endorsing the Put South Africans First movement is Action SA leader Herman Mashaba, who has in the past been vocal about cleaning up immigration issues in South Africa. He was quick to clarify that he does not support the targeting of one group over another.
“Let me be clear: I do not condone violence in any form against any person or group,” he tweeted on Tuesday. “My issue is not with foreign nationals, but with a broken immigration system and government that has allowed criminality to flourish. We must respect the rule of law.”
The Nigerian Union SA (Nusa) president Adetola Olubajo said that the organisation has called for Nigerians to steer clear of the unpredictable protesters, and said that xenophobia has no place in South Africa.
“We support fighting crime. But then I see the march only targets one set of people. You can’t paint everyone with the same brush. I don’t think [protesters] are genuine in saying they are against crime if they only march against Nigerians.”
“We’ve issued a warning to Nigerians to give the protesters space – there is potential some miscreants could use the march as an excuse to attack,” he said.
‘No evidence that Nigerians are responsible for crime’
Speaking to the Sunday Times, South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) chairperson Bongani Majola said that “a march only against Nigerians when many South Africans themselves and many other nationals are implicated in crime is discrimination and xenophobia”.
“There is no statistical evidence that Nigerians are the only ones involved in crime. It is not clear why the organisers want to single them out and why they also believe that all Nigerians commit crime.”
The South African has reached out to several of the accounts propagating the march and removal of foreign nationals, but as of yet has received no response, despite widespread claims by the group that the media fails to report “the facts” around foreign nationals and that the media “refuses to engage their perspective”.
