EDITORIAL | Stop sharing unverified messages. They are almost always untrue

A few years ago, our print predecessor, The Times, published articles on the harrowing murder of Mlungisi Nxumalo.

Nxumalo was in his car at the Pinetown taxi rank, west of Durban. In the vehicle with him was a close friend’s mentally disabled child. He was giving the boy and his father a lift home, something he did often. His friend had stepped out of the car and gone into the rank to buy a snack for the drive home, something he had done many times before. Unfortunately, as was common because of his illness, the child started screaming.

In an instant those in the rank turned on Nxumalo. They accused him of being a foreigner and, without a shred of evidence, of kidnapping a child. There was a youngster in the boot, the crowd said, as they overturned the vehicle.

Nxumalo was savagely beaten. He died on the way to hospital.

Another man, a friend who knew him and the child, tried to help. He, too, was attacked — and died in a nearby alleyway as he tried to flee.

Though it took place in 2017, it’s a story that’s worth retelling now because it happened in a specific context — that of how a fake WhatsApp message whipped up a crowd and turned it violent.

The message at the time said “foreigners are kidnapping our children”. There was no truth to this, but the message was shared so widely that it became an almost “unofficial truth” in many parts of Durban. The same message triggered a deadly wave of xenophobic violence in southern parts of Durban just a few months earlier.

The incident took place four years ago, but warrants repeating because the climate of widely circulating WhatsApp messages that now exists.

Just more than a week after the start of a “failed insurrection”, South Africans are on edge. The wanton looting, destruction and violence have left people fearful and constantly anxious.

'They' are never named and neither are the people who share these voice notes and messages. Their sources are always someone 'highly placed' or 'impeccable', but are never named. Every threat is broad and general, with specifics glaringly absent.

This tension has found its way onto social messaging apps, most notably WhatsApp. Frequent messages say “they” are targeting some place or another, that “they” are going to use Mandela Day as a platform for further violence and that “they” will use former president Jacob Zuma’s trial on Monday as a catalyst for another round of the insurgency.

“They” are never named and neither are the people who share these voice notes and messages. Their sources are always someone “highly placed” or “impeccable”, but are never named. Every threat is broad and general, with specifics glaringly absent.

However, people share these messages widely and with reckless abandon. Sometimes out of fear and anxiety, sometimes “just in case they’re true”.

The problem is that, almost always, this information isn’t true. These things don’t happen and “they” don’t do what the message said they would.

Instead, what happens is that communities get even more fearful and anxious. Tensions rise. People brace for violence and then gear up to respond accordingly. More tinder is added to the pyre.

In already tense situations, tensions rise exponentially. Things and people who aren’t threats are seen as such. People behave in ways they perhaps ordinarily wouldn’t.

In the end, as we saw with Mlungisi Nxumalo and the Good Samaritan who tried to save his life, climates are created in which people die. The Times noted at the time that fake news can kill people.

It is vital that all of us take responsibility for what we share. If we don’t we run the risk of making the situation significantly worse and, right now, we simply cannot afford to do so.