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Rwanda has just dismissed allegations that they were mobilising other countries to boycott South Africa through a Twitter as “fake news”.

Technological development has improved Information Communication Technology (ICT); we are now living in a global village. We are more interconnected than ever before. However there are many disadvantages of improved ICT - We continue to see the manifestation of propaganda through what we today term “fake news”, a term made popular by US President Donald Trump when he dismisses what he believes are pure fabrications.

There is general consensus that social media plays a pivotal role in our lives, that we are able to take our issues to Twitter, Facebook or even use WhatsApp to organise or mobilise against a certain issue. We have seen how Barrack Obama, Donald Trump have been able to use Twitter to get their voice across. Victims of sexual assaults have been able to organise themselves against sex pests in a movement known as #MeToo which afford a platform for victims to talk about their frustrations as well as getting support.

The bad side of social media is when irresponsible users are intentionally peddling lies to achieve their goals. We have seen how the Afrophobic attacks in South Africa were managed through WhatsApp. People posted violent videos or photos wrongfully claiming that they were captured in the country when it was a pure lie only intending to instigate South Africans. We saw people taking advantage of the brutal death of a taxi driver, Jabu Baloi, who was killed by a foreign drug dealer.

Fake news does not only happen in South Africa, we have seen how agitators have been able to use social media to peddle lies about the political impasse between Israel and Palestine. These instigators intentionally populate social media with video and pictures that are not even associated with the Israel-Palestine political setup. People take any media content which seeks to be violent and claim that its Israelis killing Palestinians.

I have visited Israel myself, haven’t seen many of the things that people are claiming. Many people are made to think that the political crisis in the Israel-Palestine conflict surpasses that of Syria which has been declared a worst humanitarian crisis of our time. We should not ignore the longstanding conflict between Israel and Palestine. We should also not allow propaganda machinery to mislead or misinform us. As much as the Palestinians need the world, so do the Israelis.

Big institutions such as governments, sports bodies, parties etc should not rely on fake news when taking their decisions. We have seen South African government downgrading its embassy in Tel Aviv early in 2018 after couple of lives were lost during a confrontation between Hamas group against Israel Defence Force (IDF) forcing their entry into Israel. The ANC led government immediately recalled the country’s ambassador under the ministry of Lindiwe Sisulu who was slammed for that poor decision by her advisors later. We could have sent envoy to Israel-Palestine region to assess the situation on a first hand basis than relying merely on Twitter, Facebook or fake news.

There was a narrative during the attacks on African foreign nationals that South Africans are violent or xenophobic. The suggestion was that every South African hates foreign nationals. The media has not been fair when covering the attacks as - we were not told or at least reminded the cause of the infuriation by the attackers, why are they so angry?

While violence is condemned, we should also note that South Africans were raising valid and legitimate concerns. Immigration into our country has been unregulated, uncontrolled and unmonitored especially in the Post-1994. Many people come to our country with bad intentions; they are “chief-architects” of human trafficking and drug smuggling. This does not suggest that South Africans are innocent of those inhumane practices; we know that authorities are involved including civilians who want to “make a living”.

It does not need a rocket scientist to know that the foreign nationals from African states are being exploited because of desperation; the super-exploiters (capitalists) are the ones sowing divisions between the South African citizens against the African foreign nationals. They make them compete while they are fully aware that Africans coming from warzone are going to take anything for survival compared to their South African counterparts. There should be laws in place to regulate immigration and those laws should be enforced at all times.

President Cyril Ramaphosa was recently booed during the funeral of Former Zimbabwean leader, Robert Mugabe. He was booed by Zimbabweans who are angry because of the recent violence. The official statistics suggests that 10 of 12 people killed are South Africans; it should be South African citizens who justifiably should be fighting amongst one another because another group killed others. The enraged citizens should have directed their energy to their government especially the Department of Home Affairs which has been very silent since the violence until now.

Football fanatics were left frustrated when the Zambia’s Football Association took a decision to cancel a soccer match between Zambia and Bafana Bafana. It was not justified, it is clear that they made their decision based on the media content that was doing the rounds via social media. Zambia was supposed to send an envoy to assess the situation and see if the soccer match could continue and to stop politicising sports. It did not stop there; we have seen the call by other African countries never to play with Bafana Bafana.

South African businesses in Nigeria were attacked in response to Nigeria. There was an attempt to also attack the South African embassy in Lagos. Thanks to the security force in Nigeria it never happened. The same thing happened in other embassies including in Zambia in response to the recent violence. It is clear that the social media has a negative impact in the diplomatic row between South Africa and other African countries.

We have to be wary of fake news that is easily distributed via social media. We should be using social media positively to build a better nation. Those who are found to be using social media to promote violence through peddling lies should face the might of the law and - they should be punished because they are responsible.

Issued by Political commentator Kenneth Mokgatlhe