You may have missed a potentially groundshifting but underreported story that transpired at OR Tambo International Airport where three Nigerian nationals were barred from entering the country on Sunday, 5 April. Not because they did not have the requisite paperwork, nor because they had committed any criminal act. One of the alleged offences apparently was a series of insulting social media posts by one of the individuals, a man known as Yemi Firstson on X, which ultimately rendered him undesirable for entry.
According to reports, the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (Nidcom) attributed the incident to an over-reliance on the part of these nationals to use unregulated visa agents as well as Firstson’s alleged flagging by the South African government for previous offensive social media posts, a claim which Firstson disputes. ‘At no point did any South African immigration official make reference to or ask me anything about my social media’ Firstson reportedly said.
If allegations of stricter social media monitoring are true, this incident does indicate an important direction that the SA government has taken in regard to immigration control. In fact, this story comes when home affairs has just reported deporting nearly 110 000 illegal immigrants since the formation of the government of national unity (GNU).
DR Leon Schreiber, the Minister of Home Affairs has said that, ‘These numbers show that we are now reaping the fruits of reforms focused on greater efficiency and intensified enforcement against immigration violators. Through ongoing campaigns like Operation New Broom, as well the increasing use of biometric verification tools, we have already increased deportations by 46%.’ The department’s impending ‘Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) system will record biometrics for every foreigner who enters our country,’ Schreiber further assured.
Despite having a reputation as generally a welcoming country, the on-going revamp at home affairs means that SA is finally catching up with global trends. In March last year the ambassador to the US Ebrahim Rasool was declared persona non grata by Secretary of State Marco Rubio following a webinar in which Rasool had made ‘unacceptable’ remarks about Donald Trump. Rubio had first made the decision known on X before formally informing Rasool.
The State Department also revoked the visa of SA record executive Nota Baloyi for posts he’d made about the death of Charlie Kirk in October last year. During that time, in a post on X, the department listed tweets ‘from foreigners in the US who had supported the assassination, saying “the United States has no obligation to host foreigners who wish death on Americans”’ Media24 reported.
Since last week KuGompo (formerly East London) has been engulfed in protests that have turned violent against the presence of foreign nationals. Although xenophobic and anti-foreigner tensions have sporadically been flaring up in some parts of the country, this particular case was triggered by viral social media videos and images showing the supposed coronation of Chief Solomon Ogbonna Eziko as the ‘Igwe Ndigbo’ of KuGompo.’ The subsequent social media backlash and mobilising was massive and drew large participants from as far afield as KwaZulu-Natal to the Eastern Cape.
Where employers have in recent times taken to reviewing the social media profiles of applicants, some countries have done the same to vet visa applicants. Initially this had seemed innocuous and perfectly understandable when assessing the fitness of migrants who wish to enter into one’s country. However this has also raised questions around undue bias especially in one particular case where in 2020 a Palestinian student bound for Harvard was denied entry into the US based solely on the contacts he had on his social media. Although he had not posted anything inflammatory himself, his contacts had.
In Australia, according to one report, ‘if an applicant’s social media shows they are working full-time while holding a student visa, it could lead to immediate visa revocation for breaching the visa’s conditions.’ This also means that the authorities might also use social media to scrutinize things like spousal visas and the like. With more countries realising the effectiveness of this form of monitoring or assessment, the concept of a ‘digital footprint’ takes on far more physical and immediate consequences.
The incident over the weekend at OR Tambo is an indication that perhaps on this one SA might be moving in the right direction. With a massive problem of illegal foreign nationals, more than most, clearly it would need to stay abreast of such trends. There are those who might say this veers dangerously towards the line of a fascist state, however, if kept within the prescripts of the law, it might well serve as an indispensable source for data collection. ActionSA leader, Herman Mashaba is at least one politician who appears to be unsurprisingly all for it.
Following Nigerian rapper Scooby Nero posting a video in which he claimed to own RDP houses in Roodeport where he collects rent, the Gauteng department of human settlements said it was launching an investigation into the allegations. Mashaba, however, swiftly came out guns blazing with this fiery tweet on X: ‘It is only a matter of time. We will get him. The days of South Africa being a playground of international criminal syndicates are fast coming to an end. This is the only country we have, and we are going to defend it.’
The Nigerian national has since apologized claiming that he’d meant no harm, that he was merely ‘trolling.’ However, the matter has once again shown how the seeming openness of social media often leads to possible self-incrimination and encourages that most common quality of mankind – human stupidity. In this unscripted, real-life saga we have seen criminals being rounded up from posting incriminating photos, tenderpreneurs facing the music thanks to similar lifestyle posts. Everybody from drug dealers to philandering partners have been exposed by the net. And, if it could also help to put a couple of people who have no legal right to be here on the deportation bus, perhaps social media is far more than a platform for posting what your dog had for lunch today.
Featured image: A screen grab of ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba post on X.