Regulations to curb fake news lacking – legal NGO

In recent days, social media has been filled with numerous hashtags, from #JacobZumaArrest to ProtectSA.

Some hashtags were used to spread fake news and incite brutality through violent videos from old protests that took place in the country, or were related to what was happening in South Africa.

In a briefing this week, Minister of Police Bheki Cele said 12 accounts on social media were responsible for spreading fake news and the police would ask the platforms to remove the posts, but there was no indication of pending arrests or prosecutions in this regard.

Four days ago, a video was shared on Twitter with one of the hashtags, but it was an old video from the #FeesMustFall campaign showing students at a university campus running away from police who had their weapons pointed in their direction.

The video was soon deleted when the user was told it was an old video.

Director of Lawyers for Human Rights Wayne Ncube said people who spread fake news did not care about verifying their content and South African regulations needed to pay a lot more attention to this.

“It was the way social media was used generally to conflate facts and people did not bother with fact-checking. I suppose that was beneficial to things like political views,” he noted.

Ncube added the only time the government was concerned about spreading of fake news and information was last year during lockdown level five.

“It was something SA did not deal with specifically, except at the beginning of lockdown last year during level five where part of the regulations dealt with sanctions for the spread of fake news and information about the pandemic,” he said.

Ncube said people who were spreading fake news could be charged criminally.

“However, there is also freedom of expression and the difficulty with a lot of criminal issues. The issues included that freedom of expression was an extensive right not limited in a lot of ways by the law of general application, aside from these regulations which delved more into the public health side of things and not the civil side.

“There is a Hate Crimes Bill which would try to regulate the more heinous effects of misinformation.”