From Daily Maverick · Kyle Findlay · · 1m 10s
Court ruling on asylum seekers sparked week of false claims online
South Africa's Constitutional Court ruling on asylum seekers in July led to a surge in misinformation when Home Affairs began implementing it in October, with false claims about citizenship and voting rights spreading rapidly on X ahead of local elections.
In brief
South Africa's Constitutional Court ruling on asylum seekers in July led to a surge in misinformation when Home Affairs began implementing it in October, with false claims about citizenship and voting rights spreading rapidly on X ahead of local elections. A narrow Constitutional Court ruling on asylum seekers sparked…
Court rules on asylum seekers
On seven July twenty twenty-six, South Africa's Constitutional Court ruled that asylum seekers cannot be turned away on procedural grounds before their claim is heard. The ruling was narrow and did not grant citizenship.
False claims spread rapidly online
When Home Affairs began implementing the ruling on five October, posts about it on X rose from about four thousand on three October to about sixty thousand on eight October.
Misinformation dominates as elections near
Home Affairs called the citizenship claims categorically false.Posts correcting those claims made up less than one percent of the conversation on X.
“categorically false”
The big picture
A narrow Constitutional Court ruling on asylum seekers sparked a week of false claims online when Home Affairs implemented it in October, with posts on X rising from four thousand to sixty thousand daily ahead of the four November local elections.
