Given SHINGANGE
Influence operations do not succeed because societies are careless or uninformed. They succeed because societies are structurally exposed. South Africa is one such society, not because it is uniquely weak, but because its historical, social, and institutional conditions create fertile ground for cognitive manipulation.
This vulnerability is not primarily technological. It cannot be explained by social media alone, nor solved through platform regulation or content moderation. It is rooted in long-standing fractures, unresolved grievances, and declining trust in authority. Until these structural conditions are acknowledged explicitly, responses to influence operations will remain superficial, reactive, and misdirected.
Understanding structural vulnerability is uncomfortable because it forces inward reflection rather than outward blame. But without this honesty, resilience remains rhetorical.
Influence follows fractures, not platforms
A common analytical error is to treat influence operations as a product of digital platforms. Platforms matter, but they do not determine what resonates. Influence operations follow fractures, not technologies.
In South Africa, several fractures are persistent and deeply embedded. Economic inequality remains extreme and highly visible. Unemployment, particularly among young people, is chronic. Service delivery failures are experienced daily and locally. Corruption has shifted from scandal to expectation. Political promises frequently collapse into administrative incapacity.
These conditions generate frustration, resentment, and mistrust. Influence operations do not invent grievances. They identify where emotional pressure already exists and apply narrative force.
Focusing too narrowly on platforms obscures the real drivers of vulnerability. Platforms amplify what societies already feel; they do not create those feelings from nothing.
Lived experience as a narrative battleground
In South Africa, political narratives intersect directly with lived experience. This is a critical distinction.
When electricity fails, water is unreliable, housing is inadequate, or safety deteriorates, people do not experience these as abstract governance challenges. They experience them as personal neglect. Narratives that frame these failures as intentional, inevitable, or evidence of systemic betrayal resonate quickly because they align with daily reality.
Influence operations exploit this alignment. They do not contradict lived experience; they reinterpret it. They shift the question from “why is this failing?” to “who is responsible and why should they be trusted?”
Once that shift occurs, the space for institutional explanation narrows sharply. Technical responses sound evasive. Structural complexity sounds like excuse. Emotionally satisfying narratives outperform accurate ones.
Inequality and the politics of comparison
South Africa’s inequality does more than produce hardship. It produces constant comparison.
People compare themselves to neighbours, communities, municipalities, provinces, and imagined alternatives. Digital platforms intensify this by placing unequal realities side by side without context. The result is not only frustration, but moral interpretation. Inequality becomes evidence of injustice, exclusion, or deliberate neglect.
Influence operations leverage this interpretive layer. Narratives frame inequality not simply as a policy failure, but as proof that the system benefits some at the expense of others. This framing deepens resentment and accelerates polarisation.
Once inequality is moralised in this way, compromise becomes difficult. Governance challenges are recast as existential conflicts.
Racism as a latent identity fracture
Racism remains one of South Africa’s most enduring and emotionally charged fractures, not always visible in daily discourse, but never absent from collective memory. It functions less as a constant explicit conflict and more as a latent identity fault line that can be activated under conditions of stress.
Importantly, racism in this context is not only about overt prejudice or individual attitudes. It is embedded in historical experience, spatial inequality, economic exclusion, and perceived patterns of advantage and disadvantage. These experiences are carried forward through narrative, memory, and identity.
Influence operations exploit this latent quality. Racial framing does not need to be explicit to be effective. It can be implied through language, imagery, selective emphasis, or comparison. Narratives that suggest group-based blame, intentional exclusion, or inherited injustice resonate quickly because they connect present frustration to historical explanation.
This makes racial narratives particularly powerful during elections. They compress complex structural problems into emotionally legible stories and discourage nuance, because challenging the narrative can feel like denying lived experience.
The strategic risk is not that racism suddenly “returns” during elections. It is that unresolved racial identity tensions provide a ready-made emotional infrastructure for influence.
Language, identity, and segmented influence
South Africa’s linguistic and cultural diversity is often celebrated as a strength. Strategically, it also enables segmented influence.
Narratives can be tailored by language, region, generation, class, and political identity. The same issue can be framed differently for different audiences, each version optimised for emotional resonance rather than shared understanding.
This segmentation fragments the information environment. Communities mobilise around parallel narratives that do not fully overlap. Disagreement becomes not only factual, but interpretive. Institutions struggle to communicate coherently across these divides.
Fragmentation weakens collective sense-making and lowers the threshold for manipulation.
Literacy, information processing, and cognitive load
Another often overlooked source of structural vulnerability is uneven literacy, not only in basic reading and writing, but in media literacy, digital literacy, and civic literacy.
South Africa’s information environment assumes levels of fluency that are not evenly distributed. Many citizens navigate political information across multiple languages, informal channels, and low-trust environments. Under these conditions, complex explanations struggle to compete with simplified narratives that rely on emotion, repetition, and familiar framing.
Influence operations exploit this asymmetry. They reduce complexity, personalise blame, and rely on emotionally intuitive cues rather than detailed argument. This is not a reflection of intelligence or engagement, but of cognitive load. When people are overwhelmed, they gravitate toward messages that are easier to process and emotionally coherent.
Uneven literacy also increases reliance on social trust networks. Information is evaluated not only on content, but on who shared it and how it feels. This makes segmented influence more effective and correction more difficult.
The result is not uniform misinformation, but uneven vulnerability.
Declining institutional trust as a force multiplier
Influence operations accelerate where trust is low. In South Africa, confidence in political parties, local government, law enforcement, and public institutions has eroded steadily.
As trust declines, authority shifts. People rely more on peer networks, community figures, and emotionally resonant narratives. Credibility is anchored in perceived authenticity rather than institutional role.
This is a force multiplier for influence operations. Narratives no longer require institutional validation to spread. In some cases, institutional denial reinforces belief by appearing defensive or disconnected.
Once trust collapses, correction becomes difficult. Evidence is discounted. Motives are assumed.
Algorithmic amplification and outrage economics
Digital platforms reward reaction. Content that provokes anger, fear, certainty, or moral judgement travels faster than content that explains complexity.
This creates an economy of outrage. Extreme positions gain visibility. Moderation struggles. Nuance is crowded out.
Influence operations do not need to dominate the information space. They need only to shape its emotional tone.
Why local government elections magnify vulnerability
Local government elections sit at the intersection of these dynamics.
They are emotionally proximate, tied to daily life, embedded in community identity, and less consistently scrutinised. Narratives spread through informal channels where verification is weak and trust is relational.
Influence operations can operate below national radar while producing immediate effects: protests, delegitimised councillors, contested outcomes, and community instability.
Local disruption does not need to scale nationally to be strategically effective.
Structural vulnerability is not public failure
It is tempting to interpret vulnerability as public ignorance or irresponsibility. This is inaccurate and counterproductive.
Structural vulnerability reflects historical inequality, socio-economic stress, governance failure, and information overload. Citizens responding emotionally to these conditions are not failing democracy. Democracy is failing to protect them from manipulation in a high-pressure environment.
Recognising vulnerability is not an insult. It is preparation.
Toward resilience grounded in realism
The solution is not censorship, surveillance, or panic. It is realism.
Resilience begins with acknowledging that South Africa’s exposure is structural. It requires institutions to treat cognitive risk as part of electoral integrity, political actors to compete without weaponising fracture irresponsibly, and public discourse that recognises emotion without surrendering to it.
Without this realism, technical interventions will fail. With it, preparation becomes possible.
Given SHINGANGE 