THE GATHERING 2026: Voters warned of ‘engagement farming’ ahead of local elections

Murmur Intelligence co-founder Kyle Findlay has urged South Africans to “take back the agenda” ahead of the local government elections in 2026.

Delivering a talk at Daily Maverick’s annual premier event, The Gathering, in Cape Town on on Friday, 11 September, on detecting fake election messaging, Findlay discussed how political parties can spread certain narratives of South Africa’s local government elections on 4 November. 

In the past, South Africa’s media had a reputation for holding those in power to account, but these traditional channels were now being bypassed by unaccountable and non-traditional media, such as YouTubers, podcasters, paid influencers and alternative news media channels that do not subscribe to the South African Press Code, Findlay said. 

South Africans’ relationship with equality, identity and authority was being mediated through imported narratives that did not necessarily account for the country’s nuances or, in certain cases, were not topics of concern in South Africa, he explained. 

“Topics like migration, xenophobia, Islamophobia, LGBTQ rights, religion in general, ‘white genocide’, which is a term that no one in South Africa uses – it’s only a term that we’ve been fed – served up to us by international political interests,” Findlay said. 

Topics such as these were increasingly shaping South Africa’s debates, he said.

Findlay recalled a study by Murmur Intelligence, which maps influence networks, on measuring the rise of Islamophobia in South Africa. The study found that, while narratives spread about Islam on Instagram and Facebook were mainly positive, on X the narratives took a “massive negative swing”, Findlay said. He added that narratives such as these were pushed into South Africa’s domestic conversations through engagement farming. 

According to Findlay, engagement farming is linked to South Africa’s “black market influence economy”, where celebrities, brands, politicians and political parties can pay people to get topics trending on social media and, as a result, spread a certain narrative. 

“They’re using outrage, they’re wrapping complex topics in simple answers, and they’re turning them into moral crusades,” Findlay said.               

He explained that engagement was farmed through context stripping, where interviews were strategically cut and edited to make it appear as if someone had said something that they did not. Engagement farmers relied on flooding the media with consistent content to make people more familiar with a narrative and build trust in it. 

Further, scapegoating was used to give South Africans a perceived enemy to fight against, such as blaming “Muslims, Nigerians, Zimbabweans” for complex issues faced in South Africa. 

“All a propagandist needs to do is convince someone in a position of power that his base, his constituency, his country believes something, because of the echo chamber they find themselves in. And that is how you manipulate things at scale,” he said.

Attacks on the IEC

In South Africa, free and fair elections are attacked through the media in the form of questions about the IEC’s credibility, according to Findlay.

There are three main threads of attack on the IEC’s credibility to look out for.

Firstly, Findlay said EFF mobilisers had used strong rhetorical language to voice grievances over allegations of voter manipulation, swapped results and closed voting stations allegedly resulting in voter suppression.

Secondly, Findlay discussed March and March, Operation Dudula and ActionSA’s alleged undermining of the IEC through narratives such as allowing foreign nationals to vote. 

Lastly, Findlay discussed MK supporters breaking into IEC logistics facilities, taking videos of stored ballots, posting them on TikTok and saying that these had been stolen or pre-filled. 

Findlay claimed that political parties and movements highlighted narratives such as these when they did not agree with the way things were going. 

Findlay ended his talk with a call to “take back the agenda”. He underscored that certain conversations were imposed upon South Africans and that instead South Africans had to prioritise their own issues and concerns, such as the keeping water running and growing the economy. 

Findlay reminded the audience that anyone trying to take the focus away from South Africa’s issues probably had alternative motives. He said those undermining the country’s constitutional democracy by skipping due process, by not giving everyone the same due dignity, by attacking the free press, civil society and independent judiciary were trying to manipulate South Africans. DM