With South Africans set to vote this week in local government elections, illegal immigration has emerged as the dominant issue in online political discussion, according to the Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change (CABC), which recorded more than 15,310 social media mentions of the poll.
The organisation identified 79 potentially harmful posts, ranging from claims that the election could be rigged to anti-immigrant messages and calls for people to gather at voting stations to stop foreigners from casting ballots. The CABC cautioned that unproven fraud allegations and xenophobic narratives could amplify one another, weakening public trust in the electoral process and increasing hostility towards migrant communities before voting day.
