#HumanTrafficking: social media sheds light on southern Africa’s under-reported crisis
A roadmap and analysis of social media conversations on human trafficking in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Mozambique in 2020.
ANCIR’s iLAB Authors: Allan Cheboi | Leon Vambe | Anita Igbine
At the end of 2020, social media in regions of southern Africa were flooded with posts about human trafficking. These digital conversation revealed that paranoia and panic were spreading in online communities as human trafficking became a trending conversation.
In a deep dive investigation, the iLab, a team of forensic data investigators at Code for Africa, collected social media posts on human trafficking published between 2019 and 2021. They followed the explosion of xenophobic sentiment emerging from South African Twitter users in response to human trafficking, and the focus on disgraced United States billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein in conversations on child trafficking. Their investigation maps a timeline of human trafficking conversations online and the real world events that sparked these digital posts.
Executive Summary: What’s the story?
Human trafficking is a very real crime; each day variations of it happen all over the world. But accurate data is hard to come by, given the secretive and hidden nature of this sort of crime. This isn’t to say that people aren’t talking about human trafficking: as this research, which focused on southern Africa, reveals, there were significant levels of social media conversations on the issue throughout 2020. Users in South Africa posted the highest number of tweets around the topic compared to Botswana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
The conversations covered issues around sexual trafficking, child trafficking, government actions on human trafficking cases, xenophobia around human trafficking and mentions of trafficking hotspots in South Africa.
A timeline mapping of the conversations revealed that there were several spikes in the level of interactions observed on social media — and these corresponded to real world events. In particular, the spikes observed in January, May, September and October 2020 highlighted events such as the arrest of Chinese nationals over human trafficking allegations; the case of United States billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was charged with child and sex trafficking; the September frenzy around trafficking hotspots and repetitive online chants designed to bring attention to human trafficking issues.
Introduction
Abstract
This research examines the impact of social media as a space to discuss human trafficking issues in southern African countries. The authors discuss the relationship between human trafficking conversations online and the real world events that lead to spikes in digital conversations. Human trafficking is one of the transnational organised crimes (TOC) that threatens both the African continent and the broader global community. That’s why we analysed the online environment in an attempt to understand the level of interest and sentiments on human trafficking issues in southern Africa.
Key words
#HumanTrafficking, “Human Trafficking”, “modern slavery”, “sex trafficking”, “child trafficking”, “Debt bondage”, “Forced Labor”, “Labor Trafficking”, “Commercial Sexual Exploitation”, “Trafficking Victim” and “Trafficking survivor”.
Design/ methodology/ approach
This research used social network analysis and mapped social media posts through interactions and level of reach. Data was collected, cleaned, analysed and visualised, then compiled into this report.
Research limitations/implications
The research is limited to selected, non-exhaustive lists of keywords used in online conversations around human trafficking within selected southern Africa countries. But the concepts may have wider implications in other forms of human trafficking conversations.
Practical implications
The research includes implications for the development of a framework to understand the impact of online human trafficking conversations.
Originality/value
This research allows us to better understand how human trafficking conversations are evolving in the digital age.
The context
Social media continues to gain popularity — and for good reason. These sites provide a platform for friends and families to communicate on a consistent basis, even as technology continues to improve and expand sites’ features. The internet and social media can be powerful positive forces in people’s lives. Technology enables young people to connect with each other and service providers. These connections can provide individuals with an opportunity to express themselves and to build a sense of belonging and cohesion. They’re also an opportunity to develop and sustain positive permanent connections to peers, school, faith-based organisations, and their community.
According to TalkWalker, 40% of South Africa’s population are active social media users. That’s 22.89 million people out of an estimated population of over 57 million. Facebook leads with an approximate average of 45% usage as compared to Twitter’s 15% usage in the country. The same is true for Botswana. Zimbabwe averages 33% usage for Twitter and 29% for Facebook while Mozambique averages 91% usage for Facebook and 1% for Twitter.
In the last four months of 2020, there was visible mass panic and paranoia sweeping through southern Africa’s media and online platforms. Conversations and opinions about human trafficking sparked controversial topics and concerns within the region. The absence of reliable statistics means that there is no clarity on just how big the problem is. Recent attention to international human trafficking has stimulated new attempts to understand these patterns in Africa.
Background
Human trafficking in southern Africa, as in most regions of the world, is a varied and complicated mix of governmental responses, policies, and types of trafficking. The major trends that have been documented in the region include forced labour, sex trafficking, organ trafficking or organ removal for traditional medicine, child soldiers, forced marriage, and forced adoption. For the purposes of this research, we focused on four southern African countries: South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Mozambique.
Human trafficking became topical in 2003 when the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) launched its Southern African Counter Trafficking Programme. The four countries were listed among those in Africa that were affected by human trafficking. Across the region, trafficking narratives are similar: most victims are lured by promises of jobs, education, beauty pageants, or better lives; they then find themselves trapped in forced labour in mines, factories, construction, farms, exploitative domestic service, or forced prostitution.
Zimbabwe is considered as a corridor through which people from countries such as Pakistan, India, DRC, Mozambique and Zambia are trafficked to South Africa. People from East Africa are also transported through Zimbabwe to South Africa.
The metrics
Year by year comparison
A year by year comparison of the number of tweets mentioning the human trafficking key words in the four countries revealed that the conversation spiked in 2020 by more than 3,000% as compared to 2019. By 1 March 2021, the number of mentions on Twitter for human trafficking keywords had also topped 95 percent of the level of interaction in the whole of 2019.
Using Meltwater, we searched for mentions of human trafficking on Twitter in Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe between 1 January 2019 and 4 March 2021. A total of 419 000 mentions were observed for the period. As seen above, most of the spikes in conversations around human trafficking were seen in the year 2020.
The year 2020
Based on the keywords used to identify human trafficking conversations online in southern African countries for the period January 2020 to December 2020, we noted a total of 402,000 tweets and 4,069 posts on public Facebook pages. It is important to point out that the mentions on Facebook are limited to publicly available information (posts shared on public Facebook pages). We were not able to collect mentions from private Facebook groups and Facebook profiles and, because of this limitation, we did not consider the platform as the best comprehensive source for our analysis.
We noted that there were several spikes in the number of mentions within the period. Each spike corresponded to a real world event that led to significant levels of discussions online.
We also noted that within this period, several hashtags were used to spearhead the discussions. The hashtags #humantrafficking, #endhumantraffickinginSA, #pusouthafricansfirst, #humantraffickingawareness and #nigeriansmustgo reached the trending topics in the country within the period. 95% of the tweets on human trafficking originated from South Africa, with about 2%, 2.6% and 0.5% originating from Botsawana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique respectively.
#putsouthafricansfirst and #Nigeriansmustgo were highlighted in a previous iLab investigation as trends being used to push xenophobic sentiments.
Top keywords and the highlighted narrative
A lexical analysis of the dataset presented the most important trends. The analysis revealed the prominence of several highlights related to the human trafficking discussions.
Sexual and Child Trafficking (Keywords: sex trafficking, child trafficking, women, ladies, children, kids)
Regarding the types of human trafficking cases, two prominent cases emerged. The first was related to child trafficking while the second was related to sex trafficking
Child trafficking
(Keywords: child trafficking, children, kids)
ECPAT, a worldwide network of organisations working to end the sexual exploitation of children, highlights that children are especially vulnerable to trafficking and remain relatively unprotected from exploitation for sexual and labour purposes. Due to a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS, many children are orphaned (an estimated 2,500,000 children in South Africa for the year 2018), resulting in increased poverty among children. This inevitably makes them more vulnerable to exploitation. Internal trafficking occurs within South Africa because of high unemployment and poverty. Many families are pushed into letting children move from rural to urban areas, believing promises of education, care or job opportunities. Child-sex tourism, where children are trafficked internally and across borders, also remains largely unaddressed.
Based on the conversation observed online around child trafficking, we noted that the conversation mainly focused on an international child trafficking case where an exposé by the hacking group Anonymous, alleged that billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was involved in the trafficking, rape and torture of children worldwide for entertainment. This is discussed in more detail later in our report.
Sex trafficking
(Keywords: sex trafficking, ladies, women)
According to the US States government’s Trafficking in Persons Report 2020, the South African government has made little progress in prosecuting traffickers connected to international syndicates that dominate the commercial sex industry in several South African cities and operate with impunity.
Based on conversations observed online around sex trafficking, we noted that the conversation mainly focused on another international case rather than a local case. The conversation focused on Jason Roger Pope, a 42-year old white man who was a local DJ and promoter in South Carolina also known as DJ Kid. He faced charges for allegedly trafficking up to 700 black women and girls for years. His Facebook page shows hundreds of photos of him with several different black women, mostly in compromising positions. According to a Facebook screenshot, Pope reportedly even once bragged that “I’m 36 with 693 BODIES (All Black females), WBU [What ‘bout you?]?”.
Posts can be seen highlighting the case. It is worth noting that Epstein’s case also featured in the conversation around sexual trafficking since children linked to Epstein’s trafficking operation had also allegedly been sexually exploited.
Government actions on human trafficking
(Keywords: government, police, ANC, Alcohol, drugs)
Social media users also took to Twitter to post their complaints and dissatisfaction around government efforts to curb human trafficking. Several users claimed that the ANC, South Africa’s governing party, has been ignoring the issue; they argued that the EFF, an opposition party, would have done more to combat human trafficking.
Several users lashed out at comments made by Police Minister Bheki Cele, who had, during a press briefing on September 22, 2020, appealed to the public to stop spreading false claims about kidnapping and human trafficking. Users misinterpreted Cele’s comments to indicate that the government was not taking human trafficking allegations seriously.
Xenophobia
(Keywords: Chinese, Nigerian, Namibia)
South Africa often makes the headlines for violent attacks against immigrants, particularly those from elsewhere on the African continent. Xenophobic vitriol has also been used in conversations on human trafficking that peaked in September 2020. In this instance, xenophobic posts were seen to include content that irrationally spoke ill of foreign nationals. Social media has given ordinary South Africans a platform to voice their anger, with some posts claiming that foreign immigrants are responsible for the increase in vices such as human trafficking and drug trafficking in the country. The majority of the xenophobic posts highlighted human trafficking cases which incriminated Nigerian and Chinese nationals.
Nigerian cases
The level of interaction mentioning Nigeria peaked when five Nigerian nationals were arrested and charged with human trafficking after South Africa’s specialised anti-organised crime police unit, the Hawks, found ten women working in sexually exploitative conditions at a brothel.
This sparked a lot of discussions online: the majority of the posts demanded that Nigerians should leave the country. In the same month, September, thousands of South Africans marched with banners and placards demanding that Nigerians, Zimbabweans, and other foreigners leave the country.
The protesters claimed that foreigners were taking away their jobs and committing crimes such as drugs and trafficking — the same narratives that have been used to attack foreigners and their properties in the past. Below are some of the most retweeted posts:
Chinese cases
The levels of interactions mentioning the ‘Chinese’ keyword peaked early in the year when seven Chinese nationals appeared for a bail hearing after their arrest in November 2019 following a blitz operation in which a factory staffed with 91 Malawian nationals — including 37 children — was discovered. This case is further explained later in this report.
Several users took to Twitter to condemn the situation, while others shared xenophobic sentiments against Chinese immigrants working in the country. Other users blamed the governing ANC for not re-enforcing strict labour and immigration laws. Below are some of the most retweeted posts using the keyword.
Namibian cases
The levels of interactions mentioning the ‘Namibia’ keyword peaked in September 2020. The Hawks had arrested five suspects for alleged human trafficking of young women from a number of countries including Namibia.
The conversations also highlighted the trends seen in October 2020, when the small country of Namibia saw large protests across numerous cities as young women marched against gender-based violence under the hashtag #ShutItAllDown.
The protests followed a number of violent assaults against women, including the discovery of the body of a young woman who had gone missing in April. Protestors demanded drastic action, including a state of emergency, in response to the issue of violence against women and girls.
Trafficking hotspots
(Keywords: Cape town, Johannesburg, Pretoria)
In September 2020, online human trafficking conversations sparked multiple claims of danger from social media users. Key among them was a list of human trafficking hotspots located in three South African cities: Pretoria, Johannesburg and Cape Town. An investigation by the iLAB seeking to confirm the validity of the claims — that the mentioned locations were human trafficking hotspots — revealed that the majority had been mentioned on social media platforms, such as Facebook, from as early as 2013.
Within the period 2013–2019, the alleged hotspots were identified as fake job interview locations (scams). According to allegations users made on social media in the past, scammers would attract interested applicants to these fake interview locations and then solicit application fees from them to attend the interviews. No posts connected these locations to human trafficking in between 2013 and 2019. You can read the full report here.
Sentiment analysis
Sentiment analysis is a Natural Language Technique used to determine if the view or reaction towards a product, brand or topic is positive, negative or neutral. The text is classified usually based on a predefined dictionary with an attached sentiment score. Some words are seen to denote positivity while some express negative opinion. Those which do not fall within negative or positive sentiment scores are classified as neutral. These include statements, questions or neutral comments. From a sentiment analysis of the tweets, 25% of the tweets had negative sentiments indicating that the social media users were using words that mostly express negative opinion about the topic. Only 2% of the tweets were labelled as having a positive sentiment.
Timeline
The iLAB analysed and reviewed the tweets to identify the causes of sporadic spikes in the conversations.
The Beautiful City syndicate from China
During the first spike, a total of 9.7k tweets were posted within a three-week period. The conversation mainly focused on the arrest of seven Chinese nationals in November 2019 following a blitz operation in which a factory staffed with 91 Malawian nationals — including 37 children — was discovered. They were arrested for allegedly running an illegal enterprise called Beautiful City Pty Limited in Village Deep, Johannesburg, where it is claimed that they were trafficking undocumented immigrants into South Africa and subjecting them to forced labour. This sparked an online debate, with the majority of posts criticising the government
The most retweeted post was from @Abramjee; it highlighted a case where law enforcement raided the premises of Beautiful City (Pty) Ltd in Village Deep, Johannesburg and found 150 labourers. It was found that 149 of themwere undocumented foreigners.
The next most retweeted post was from Zuki_Lamani who warned of a possible human trafficking syndicate that posed as friends or famous people to trick unsuspecting people.
The other most retweeted post was from @_almightyeli. The tweets from this account are protected, and we were unable to see their contents.
Epstein’s child trafficking ring
During the second spike, there were a total of 11.7k tweets posted within a one-week period. The conversation mainly focused on the expose by Anonymous hacking group that alleged billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was involved in the trafficking, rape and torture of children worldwide, for entertainment. It is alleged that Epstein traveled the world in circles that included former US presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Tony Blair, the United Kingdom’s Prince Andrew, celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz, former governor Bill Richardson, and many others.
The most retweeted post was from @u_snedlamini. The post included an alleged excerpt from ‘Jeffrey Epstein’s Little Black Book’. It contained a comprehensive list of names linked to his alleged child trafficking ring. The highlighted names are of people based in South Africa, sparking controversy and online fever around the topic.
The next most retweeted post was from @Mpume_Luv which states that South African cops are involved in a number of crimes including human trafficking, rape, abuse and drug syndicates.
The other most retweeted post was from @mefeater which congratulated the Netflix SA series “Blood and Water”, a series with a human trafficking theme, for reaching the number 1 spot in 10 countries.
Using gephi, a social network visualisation tool, we visualised the network activity between 26 May and 3 June 2020 and noted significant activity around the three accounts highlighted above.
The September online frenzy
Four distinct spikes were observed in September 2020, garnering a total of 237k tweets which represented about half of all the tweets posted in 2020.
Mentions around human trafficking spiked between 1 September and early October 2020 as there was a surge of posts and conversations about trafficking hotspots.
Notably, a tweet on 6 September 2020 from @DrSelwin mentioned 53 & 65 Johannes Ramokhoase Street in Pretoria to be human trafficking hotspots. The post, which was retweeted 6.8k times, shows images of the building where alleged trafficking crimes took place.
In support of the above claim, an additional tweet by an alleged 53 Johannes Ramokhoase Street survivor was captured, narrating how she survived the scam.
The claim has since been fact checked by AFP confirming that the location was in fact a residential building accommodating police officers. Therefore, the posts suggesting that the building was being used for criminal activities are misleading and untrue.
Other popular hashtags that were noted throughout our analysis included #NigeriansMustGo and #PutSouthAfricansFirst.
Xenophobic sentiments were noted in the conversations that happened in September. One of the most retweeted posts showed a user who made allegations that Nigerians were at the centre of most human trafficking syndicates in South Africa around the Sunnyside and Hillbrow areas.
The other most retweeted post was from @Abramjee which aimed at spreading news about the disappearance of 16-year-old Siphesihle Maluleka. The post was retweeted 5k times and showed that Maluleka was suspected to be a victim of human trafficking.
As highlighted earlier in the report, a comprehensive investigation on alleged human trafficking hotspots in South Africa was done by the iLAB and findings have been documented in this dossier.
Using gephi, a social network visualisation tool, we visualised the network activity between 01 Sept 2020 and 5 Oct 2020 and noted significant activity.
The online chant
The last significant spike was observed in October 2020, continuing to early November 2020, garnering a total of 59k tweets. What was peculiar about this section of the spike was the ‘chanting’ mechanism being used to highlight the human trafficking situation in South Africa.
The majority of posts featured repeated messaging which seemed to create an awareness campaign or an online protest against human trafficking in South Africa. These posts largely contributed to a spike observed on 21 October 2020.
The #EndHumanTraffickingInSA hashtag took over Twitter on 21 October 2020 resulting in a 36k spike in the number of mentions. According to comments on Twitter, the hashtag may have been motivated by the demand from SA citizens to have the government take action against human trafficking following several incidents.
One of the most retweeted posts was initiated by @akreana_, garnering a total of ~6k retweets.
This then became an awareness campaign against human trafficking: some notable personalities in the country also tweeted it.
The next most retweeted post was initiated by a South African personality @Boity whose aim was to raise awareness against human trafficking in the country. The tweet was retweeted 5k times within the four countries in the scope.
The next most retweeted post was from @NomzamoMbatha which highlighted concerns about the South African government’s incapability to curb and take action against purported rising human trafficking syndicates and rings.
A gephi visualisation of the network shows that the campaign meant to create awareness around human trafficking issues did have an impact online, with most of the interactions or activities originating from popular artists and organisations in the country.
Conclusions
The research revealed that significant levels of conversations around human trafficking happened in the year 2020. Out of the four southern African countries under review, users in South Africa posted the highest number of tweets around the topic. The conversations covered issues around sexual trafficking, child trafficking, government actions on human trafficking cases, xenophobia around human trafficking and mentions of trafficking hotspots in South Africa.
A timeline mapping of the conversations revealed that there were several spikes in the level of interactions observed on social media which correspond to real world events. In particular, the spikes observed in January, May, September and October highlighted events such as the arrest of Chinese nationals over human trafficking allegations, the case of Billionaire Epstein around child and sex trafficking allegations, the September frenzy around trafficking hotspots and the online chant to bring attention to human trafficking issues.
The Authors
Code for Africa (CfA) is the continent’s largest network of non-profit independent civic technology and open data laboratories, with a multidisciplinary team of over 70 full-time technologists and analysts in 15 African countries. CfA’s laboratories build digital democracy solutions that give citizens unfettered access to actionable information to improve citizens’ ability to make informed decisions, and to strengthen civic engagement for improved public governance and accountability.
The African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR) is a CfA initiative that brings together the continent’s best investigative newsrooms, ranging from large traditional mainstream media to smaller specialist units. ANCIR member newsrooms investigate crooked politicians, organised crime and big business. The iLAB is ANCIR’s in-house digital forensic team of data scientists and investigative specialists who spearhead investigations that individual newsrooms are unable to tackle on their own. This includes forensic analysis of suspected digital disinformation campaigns aimed at misleading citizens or triggering social discord or polarisation using hate speech or radicalisation or other techniques.
The iLAB subscribes to CfA’s guiding principles:
- We show what’s possible. Digital democracy can be expensive. We seek to be a catalyst by lowering the political risk of experimentation by creating successful proofs-of-concept for liberating civic data, for building enabling technologies and for pioneering sustainable revenue models. We also seek to lower the financial costs for technology experimentation by creating and managing ‘shared’ backbone civic technology and by availing resources for rapid innovation.
- We empower citizens. Empowering citizens is central to our theory of change. Strong democracies rely on engaged citizens who have actionable information and easy-to-use channels for making their will known. We therefore work primarily with citizen organisations and civic watchdogs, including the media. We also support government and social enterprises to develop their capacity to meaningfully respond to citizens and to effectively collaborate with citizens.
- We are action-oriented. African societies are asymmetric. The balance of power rests with governments and corporate institutions, at the expense of citizens. Citizens are treated as passive recipients of consultation or services. We seek to change this by focusing on actionable data and action-oriented tools that give agency to citizens.
- We operate in public. We promote transparency in our work and in the work of our partners. All of our digital tools are open source and all our information is open data. We actively encourage documentation, sharing, collaboration, and reuse of both our own tools, programmes, and processes, as well as those of partners.
- We help build ecosystems. We actively marshal resources to support the growth of a pan-African ecosystem of civic technologists. Whenever possible we reuse existing tools, standards and platforms, encouraging integration and extension. We operate as a pan-African federation of organisations who are active members of a global community, leveraging each other’s knowledge and resources, because all of our work is better if we are all connected.
This report was authored by the iLAB’s African team, consisting of investigative manager Allan Cheboi, data analysts Leon Vambe and Anita Igbine. The report was edited by senior programme manager Amanda Strydom, deputy CEO Chris Roper, editorial lead Raessa Pather, copy-editor Natasha Joseph, and approved for publication by CEO Justin Arenstein.
