How a narrow court ruling became a week of anti-foreigner rage online

A narrow Constitutional Court ruling on asylum applications was distorted online into false claims about citizenship, grants, jobs and voting, fuelling anti-foreigner mobilisation in Durban.

When the Constitutional Court handed down its Scalabrini judgment on 7 July, it said something legally modest: asylum seekers cannot be turned away at the door on procedural grounds, such as how they entered the country, before anyone hears their claim.

Three months later, a distorted version of that ruling is part of the story of anti-foreigner unrest in Durban. Murmur Intelligence analysed 98,419 posts from 18,919 X users and 251 YouTube videos with 6,406 comments between 3 and 9 October, a sample of roughly 250,000 posts on the topic over those days. Here is what the data shows, and what it doesn’t.

A week of acceleration

Online conversation grew almost every day. On 3 October, there were ~4,000 relevant posts on X. By 8 October, there were ~60,000. YouTube comments on relevant videos grew from 39 to 2,440 over the same days, peaking on the same day.

The trigger was the Department of Home Affairs’ operational directive implementing the Scalabrini judgment. It told refugee reception offices to resume accepting new applications and not to turn people away for unlawful entry, missing documents or reporting late. The first widely shared posts in opposition to the directive appeared on 3 October from Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma (@JacintaNgobese), framing it as a United Nations-imposed registration of “illegal immigrants”.

**Driven by domestic actors **

This looks like a homegrown response, or, to the extent that geopolitical interests might be involved, they would be acting through local proxies, which is quite feasible given the mature nature of South Africa’s influence-for-hire economy. Based on our samples, the conversation ran to roughly 250,000 posts over the week, a high volume for a specific topic in South Africa. The vast majority of the posts were authored by South African accounts, and most of the rest were reposts of South African accounts.

Homegrown does not mean organic, though. Paid influencers and accounts with high buzzer scores, which repeatedly amplify the same few influencers, are prominent in the network and have been a mainstay feature of the anti-foreigner movement ever since its launch in April 2020, giving it an outsized presence within our national psyche that it does not fully deserve. This week’s events suggest that the movement’s agenda continues to be amplified.

X interaction network of political conversations. Users are connected together when they repost or @mention each other. Different colours represent distinct communities identified with a community detection algorithm. Node size denotes influence based on the number of reposts and @mentions each account received. (Image: Murmer)

Not one lie, but several

The disingenuous reframing of the Scalabrini judgment is that the ruling essentially grants citizenship to all asylum seekers.

The data shows that the argument was broader than this, though. Most misinformation focused on the knock-on effects of the misrepresentation of the ruling, such as asylum seekers supposedly having unfair access to grants and pensions, as well as distortions around jobs and labour law.

Claims about voting rights, particularly that asylum seekers might vote in the 4 November local elections, followed. A post claiming that “over 3 million” refugees and asylum seekers had applied for Sassa grants was reposted almost 5,000 times. It carried no source, and we could not corroborate it.

Home Affairs explicitly refuted claims that asylum seekers automatically gain citizenship. On 7 October, the department called claims that the judgment grants citizenship or “blanket legalisation” “categorically false”. It described “an apparent coordinated disinformation campaign” and referred the matter to the Independent Electoral Commission. One commentator noted that AI-generated images of DA ministers “welcoming asylum seekers” were also circulating, tying this issue to electioneering.

Who pushed it

The earliest high-engagement post using these framings was from March and March’s Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma (@JacintaNgobese), on 3 October, with ~2,000 reposts. Her posts were reposted thousands of times over the week, more than twice any other account. @Dzungie007 followed on 4 October with a claim that spaza shop owners would be “documented as asylum seekers”. @Dzungie007 is the second-largest account in the March and March X community after Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma (@JacintaNgobese) in this analysis, so the foreshadowing of things to come came from inside the movement. Reposts of their Sunday, 4 October posts about people being “documented” from Monday, 5 October 2026 (the date the directive was applied), such as this one and this one, show the message circulating the day before mainstream news carried the story.

Early posts highlighting the impact of the Scalabrini ruling. (Image: Murmer)

Posting was unusually concentrated – 40% of all reposts amplified just 20 accounts’ content, and 90% of posts were reposts. Several groups of 800 to 1,300 users behaved in near-identical ways. The data cannot show whether they were activists, ordinary supporters or paid participants.

We also have no direct evidence of payment or central coordination. However, these numbers are unusually high, and the prominence of paid mega influencers and high-scoring buzzer accounts suggest that the movement was amplified, even though it was homegrown.

The accounts at the centre

The top local influencers read like a roll-call of the anti-foreigner movement. Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma (@JacintaNgobese) anchors the March and March community, with @Dzungie007 a clear second. Durban Network (@Durbannetwork), a local live-update account, played a key role: its post of a protester’s call to “stand up” against the documenting of illegal immigrants was reposted thousands of times. Mega influencers such as Chris Excel (@ChrisExcel102) and Knick (@Knick_RSA) were also prominent.

Knick (@Knick_RSA) has been an anchor account in this movement for some time – they drove the conversation around Mazwi Khubeka, which kick-started the recent resurgence of anti-foreigner sentiment ahead of the 30 June 2026 march. Other accounts reposted @Knick_RSA’s claims that illegal foreigners are being given asylum freely in the Eastern Cape, that white people are not safe from illegal foreigners and that the Constitutional Court puts illegal foreigners ahead of citizens. A repost of a Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma(@JacintaNgobese) post, describing asylum seekers as men who “pretend to be refugees”, speaks in a similar register.

The buzzer scoring also surfaces extremely prolific accounts. One, @keletso30933369, has posted more than an unprecedented 800,000 times since it was created.

From timelines to the street

Mobilisation language peaked on 6 October, when posts reported March and March members closing the Home Affairs office on Moore Road in Durban. The next day, SABC News reported high tension at the centre in a video watched more than 105,000 times. Calls for a “national shutdown” on 31 October surfaced on 5 and 6 October, and references to the 4 November elections run throughout, including unverified calls for a shutdown on the day of the elections.

YouTube: The same arguments, all local

YouTube told a similar story, and it was also local. Popular videos amplified the anti-immigrant, anti-directive angle. They included a a Rules & Rulers by Di episode on refugee law and the Employment Bill. All three channels appear to be South African.

Political echoes

ActionSA – a prime-mover and long-term political beneficiary of the anti-foreigner movement – gave the anti-directive messaging political weight. On 7 October, a statement from ActionSA Chief Whip Lerato Ngobeni, posted by Herman Mashaba, said the party viewed the directive “with grave concern”. A post from the party’s own account (@Action4SA) said the asylum system “cannot become a back door for illegal immigration”. Neither post repeats the false claims, but both sit inside the same opposition to the directive.

Our analysis also finds a community we call “Anti-Immigration Conservatives”, which includes the ActionSA-aligned account @miz_ruraltarain and the #PutSouthAfricansFirst account (@Patriot_S_A). It mixes migration with crime and identity themes and borrows international right-wing talking points, closer to US Maga-style politics than to a policy debate.

Many of its influencers act as bridge accounts between local farm murders and international “white genocide” conversations. Thus, we see the anti-immigration message buffeting South Africa from opposite ends – from KZN strongholds via March and March and from conservative, right-wing, mostly white Maga-aligned commentators.

Criticisms of the implementation of the Scalabrini ruling peaked on 7 October. Rebuttals peaked a day later and made up just 0.9% of X posts. On YouTube, the debunking videos drew fewer comments than the coverage, and many replies reverted to the rumour. As one commentator put it, a Constitutional Court ruling “does not fit in a WhatsApp forward”.

The damage was done. A small group of powerful, local anti-foreigner activists were able to parlay a technical court ruling into a mobilisation of their online amplification machinery and their boots-on-the-ground capabilities in parallel.

In the process, they demonstrated a contempt for the law that resulted in violence and the destruction of livelihoods and property. With the elections just weeks away, the question to ask is, who benefits politically from these acts? The next dates to watch are 31 October and 4 November. DM

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