XENOPHOBIA: Afrophobic SA Twitter account connected to nationalist political party By Tessa Knight and Jean le Roux for DFRLab jean_leroux awildknight
, the hashtags #PutSouthAfricansFirst, #ZimbabweansMustFall, #NigeriansMustGo, and #InfluxOfImmigrantsMustStop took root online, with many social media users blaming foreigners for taking away South Africans’ jobs.
The account posted screenshots indicating that it had maxed out its follower count due to its participation in follow-back campaigns and continued to participate in — and even start — follow-back campaigns based on the trending Afrophobic hashtags. The Facebook post, anonymised by the DFRLab, and @ulerato_pillay’s post were created 90 minutes apart, with the Facebook post crediting ‘Lerato Pillay’.
A search of @uLerato_pillay’s account for “sfiso” returns multiple results. Noticeably, on 23 April 2020, the account posted ato a change.org petition, asking for DStv, a paid television subscription service, to lower their prices during the Covid-19 pandemic. The petition was created by a user named Sfiso J Gwala. In a response to the original tweet, @uLerato_pillay said the petition was created by an account called @SfisoGwala_SA.
Timestamps from the page source code for the Change.org petition , reveal that @uLerato_Pillay tweeted a link to the petition within two minutes of its creation, and several minutes before its alleged creator @SfisoGwala_SA . The DFRLab also found limited evidence that the @uLerato_pillay account used an email address that contains the words “sfiso gwala”, although the evidence was uncorroborated.a glimpse of a political manifesto for an organisation called South African First , an anti-immigrant political party started by Mario Khumalo that was first registered with South Africa’s Electoral Commission in 2016.
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