Facebook under fire as anti-migrant hate spreads online in South Africa

CapeTalk's John Maytham is joined by Heidi Swart, an independent journalist and analyst with RiskCollective.

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As anti-migrant sentiments increase in South Africa, focus has shifted to how social media, especially Facebook, is being utilised to intensify hate and division.

A recent opinion piece by investigative journalist Heidi Swart examines the impact of Meta’s decision to abandon professional fact-checking and how this has enabled groups like Operation Dudula to thrive online.

The political group, widely recognised as being intolerant of foreign nationals, has nearly 90,000 members on its official Facebook page.

Swart explains how the information in her recent article was based on a survey conducted in April this year.

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"We looked at how prevalent the term 'Operation Dudula' was on Facebook in terms of how many groups and pages had those two words in their name - and there were over 250 groups."

Heidi Swart, Journalist

"We looked at which ones were negative, and I can count on one hand the ones that were actually positive or that were against Operation Dudula, it was negligible."

Heidi Swart, Journalist

Swart says of the groups which mention the name 'Operation Dudula', the largest has some 36,000 members.

"So they've got a strong Facebook presence, the groups that are anti-foreigner."

Heidi Swart, Journalist

Swart says she came across some very disturbing content during her research for the article:

" One where a man has been caught supposedly stealing power cables and you can see he's been beaten to a pulp - there's no warning...he's interrogated about where he's from, he says Tanzania."

Heidi Swart, Journalist

"There's calls for spaza shops to be shut down and depictions of criminal activity, that ascribes this criminal activity to foreigners in South Africa without any real proof."

Heidi Swart, Journalist

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