Fearmongering posts make false claims about martial law in South Africa

As South Africans brace for national elections in a few months, political disinformation has started to spread on social media. One post making the rounds claims that South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa is facing arrest and that martial law has been declared. This is false; the army rejected the claims as “fake”. Ramaphosa has not been arrested, nor is he facing criminal charges.

“Our President Ramaphosa was called away to a meeting of national security which is called by the ‘international military alliance’ to inform him of the Imminent Lockdown in South Africa and his Imminent arrest (sic),” reads an X post published on January 8, 2024.

“The South African Government has been ordered to step down as we under Martial Law (sic),” it adds.

The post, with more than 3,000 likes and more than 1,000 reposts, claims this was announced during a 30-minute “Emergency Alert System (EAS)/Emergency Broadcast System (EBS)” broadcast received in Parys, a resort town in South Africa’s Free State province.

The bottom of the post features a link to an article about Ramaphosa taking a day off during the governing party’s annual new-year gathering from January 6-8, but there is no mention of impending military rule (archived here).

Screenshot of the false X post, taken on January 23, 2024

Despite multiple comments confirming no such events were underway in South Africa, others who replied to the post appeared to want to believe it was possible.

Screenshot of some of the replies to the X post

The account behind the original post followed up with a screenshot of a report taken from South African news channel Newzroom Afrika.

Screenshot of Newzroom Afrika news report

A YouTube video of the Newsroom Afrika bulletin included an interview with the ruling African National Congress (ANC) spokeswoman, who said on January 6, 2024, that Ramaphosa would not be available for some activities during the party’s two-day National Executive Committee meeting because of an unspecified emergency (archived here).

When this opened the door to speculation about Ramaphosa’s health, his spokesman Vincent Magwenya stated on X that the president “decided to spend the rest of the day at home ahead of a busy week (archived here)”.

The X account responsible for the claims posts various conspiracy theories about US politics and celebrities. The account is also frequently the subject of fact checks, including here, here and here (archived here, here and here).

Similar claims of martial law in South Africa were also shared on Telegram and Facebook, and in a voice note that attacked those who questioned the veracity of the purported EBS/EAS alert.

A screenshot of the false claim published on Telegram

However, the claims are false.

No martial law

AFP Fact Check contacted the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) to verify the claims.

“From our side, there’s nothing like that, and we view this as nothing but a scarecrow and hoax,” said SANDF spokesman Siphiwe Dlamini, who confirmed there was never a military base in Parys, “except a commando unit — a loose structure — that was discontinued a while back”.

Commando units were made up of community members to provide security in rural areas. They were manned by former apartheid security operatives and progressively disbanded from 2003 (archived here).

“People should exercise caution and not believe what they see or hear on social media platforms. There is a lot of fake information going around,” said Dlamini.

On January 2, 2024, SANDF distanced itself from comments made by a former naval officer Sylvester Mangolele who had threatened to remove Ramaphosa from office for “failing the country” (archived here).

Mangolele had given Ramaphosa 48 hours to report to the naval college at Gordon’s Bay in the Western Cape and hand in his resignation.

In its response, SANDF said Mangolele was dismissed in 2018.

“The SANDF condemns Sylvester Mangolele’s utterances with the contempt it deserves. His comments are not reflective of nor represent the SANDF in any way shape or form,” reads their statement.

A screenshot of the SANDF statement

As of publication on January 26, 2024, South Africa remains governed under civil law.

Alerts to civilians

Andrew Mortimer, who manages the Emergency, Policing Incident Control (EPIC) system in the City of Cape Town, said there is no real system that alerts civilians in the country to an emergency, even though it would be possible with the available telecommunication networks.

EPIC is an internal system that was delivered at the end of 2016 and communicates with any of the city’s agencies, including the “City of Cape Town metro police department, traffic services, law enforcement, disaster risk management, fire and rescue and public emergency contacts and it’s a transactional system that pretty much runs all the departments“.

Mortimer said regional emergency management systems differ from one municipality to the next, “but none of them broadcast to citizens”.

And while there are apps currently being developed that could communicate with civilians on a regional scale, there are no national ones as yet.

Mortimer added that there are networks between the cities and province departments that are in place, which were strengthened during the Covid-19 pandemic.

During the pandemic — while the country was under a National State of Disaster — the presidency communicated when Ramaphosa would be speaking to the nation and this would be broadcast on television, radio and official social media accounts (archived here).

In the US, the Emergency Alert System (EAS) is a national public warning system used by state and local authorities to deliver emergency information (archived here).

“We have these historical occurrences in terms of martial law”

Johan Wassermann, a history professor at South Africa’s University of Pretoria, said there were noteworthy examples of martial law restrictions before the Union of South Africa (in 1910), as well as during the mineworker strikes in 1922 under Jan Smuts.

“We have these historical occurrences in terms of martial law — where you are under a kind of military rule and the legal rule of law is suspended — but no real contemporary examples of that in South Africa,” said Wassermann.

Wassermann also said he believes it would be highly unlikely to happen in the near future.

Meanwhile, Ramaphosa was seen free and in good health on January 26, 2024, reacting to a ruling by the International Court of Justice that Israel should do everything it can to prevent any acts of genocide in Gaza.

Presidential elections will be held in South Africa sometime between May to August.