Hateful Language Trends in South Africa During 2019 Election
By Caleb Gichuhi | Senior Specialist
Earlier this year, I led a team at PeaceTech Lab, in partnership with Media Monitoring Africa, in monitoring and analysing online and offline hateful language trends that occurred during South Africa’s election season. After gathering the information, I analysed the online patterns against offline events and offered insights on the potential relationship between this type of language and instances of violence seen in municipalities country wide. A series of six reports were produced, highlighting trending key terms, along with five blogs to provide a deeper dive into the data.
Analytical Process
The terms monitored came from the Lab's recently published South Africa Lexicon of Hateful Terms. We put together a monitoring process that used human and automated intelligence to identify and analyse hateful language online. This process utilized teams of human monitors who used the terms from the lexicon to look for patterns, trends and volume of the terms on public social media. Concurrently, the terms from the lexicon were plugged into an automated intelligence platform that monitored the terms on a wider scale on public content. These processes examined offensive and inflammatory language directed toward individuals or groups based on ethnicity, religion, race, gender, national identity, or political affiliation and with the potential to lead to violence.
We further consolidated and contextualized the gathered data in relation to activities on the ground that were monitored by Media Monitoring Africa through mainstream media. The aim for this activity was to understand the correlations between language online and local violent incidents to provide early warnings of potential violence.
Summary of Findings
Conversation online was being dominated by terms like “Land Thieves” [1] and “White Monopoly Capital” [2] while ongoing debates on land access, inequality, and race continued to be hot-button topics for many of South Africa’s social media users.
From as early as January 2019, this monitoring process saw a steady increase in the use of hateful language in South Africa overall— in particular, the increased usage of the term land thieves. While there were specific events during this time period that triggered the gradual increase in the volume of hate terms, the rise was also attributed to the election scheduled for May 2019. Land was at the center of many political discussions, with talks about constitutional amendments focusing on land acquisition becoming popular as the election drew close.
In April, the monitoring identified a correlation between violence on the ground and hate speech online. Instances of xenophobic attacks in Durban toward the end of March came after weeks of anti-immigrant rhetoric by South African politicians and led to a surge in the online use of the term Makwerekwere [3] which targets immigrants, in the days immediately after.
Campaigns in the lead up to the elections set the stage for a polarized racial discourse on social media for most of April when leaders such as African National Congress (ANC) Secretary General Ace Magashule urged voters in Philipi not to vote for umlungu [4] [white people] resulting in the increased volume of the term umlungu on social media. In the same month, there were 13 farm attacks and three farm murders [5] during the Easter weekend that were preceded by a spike in volume of the phrase kill the farmer kill the boer. While this does not imply causality, it does begin to question whether it was a coincidence.
Election week saw the usage of the term land thieves increase in volume as the Black First Land First (BLF) party, called for the amendment of section 25 of the South African constitution, to allow for land expropriation without compensation therefore facilitating land ownership for black South Africans. In their efforts to advance their land rights agenda, the BLF party coined the slogan “Land or Death” which would later be declared as constituting hate speech by the Equality Court, giving the party one month to remove the slogan from their social media platforms and website.
Post-election, the term white monopoly capitalists saw a significant increase in usage online as ANC’s Secretary General, Ace Magashule, painted white monopoly capitalism as a power structure to be dismantled in order to economically liberate the black African. At the same time, Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, used it to influence the president’s office. He issued a warning to the president that if he listens to white monopoly capital, the president won’t finish his term. The term kaffir also surfaced online after Hellen Zille tweeted about “black privilege”.
The use of hateful language on social media increased throughout the four-month monitoring period, indicating underlying and ongoing issues that are not inherently linked to elections.
The overall volume of hateful language on social media platforms continues to increase post-election. This can be attributed to pre-existing underlying issues that were present even before elections. Among them are farm killings, racism and land expropriation without compensation. These issues continued to dominate social media conversations after the elections were over, resulting in increased hateful content. For instance, the post-election period also saw an increase in reporting by media on farm attacks and farm killing stories involving white people and court cases involving racism charges.
Conclusion
Hateful language continues to be a problem in South Africa and while the Crimen Injuria laws were established to curtail hate speech in the country, analysis of social media shows that hateful discourse is on the rise, and the volatility of online content has yet to be addressed. Legal measures are commendable, however, to address the problem in a comprehensive manner, taking approaches that enlighten people, change their way of thinking and broaden their perspectives, by using measures such as intercultural dialogue, and education on tolerance and diversity might be required.
One way you can address this hate speech problem on social media platforms is to flag and report hateful content that you encounter on social media platforms for the social media companies to pull down. If you are not sure how to report this content, PeaceTech Lab created some videos that provide guidance on how to do so on popular social sites. You can further use our lexicons if they apply to your context as a guide of what terms to report.
References
[1] An English language phrase that is typically directed by blacks, including black politicians, against whites who are perceived to be the predominant owners of land in South Africa
[2] The meaning behind the phrase is that, “White people use their (perceived) capital wealth in monopolist ways to enrich themselves” - manipulating the economy or ‘pulling all the strings.
[3] This is a colloquial term meaning ‘foreigner’ and is generally used to target black migrants or refugees in South Africa, especially those from southern African countries.
[4] It is a Xhosa and Zulu word which some South Africans believe refers to the white foam — white scum — from the ocean; thus, some whites view it as pejorative.