Gogo was a Zimbabwean national employed as a bakery manager at Khayelitsha SuperSpar, which is part of the Erarite Group (Erarite). On 24 June 2022, Gogo posted a Bible verse on his personal WhatsApp status and on the management group’s WhatsApp status. The verse quoted purported to suggest that foreigners were gaining power over local residents.
Gogo’s statuses were posted subsequent to the commencement of a xenophobic Facebook campaign, naming 23 foreign nationals employed by the store where he worked, which called for protest action on 16 June 2022 to “shut down” the store. In response to the campaign, Erarite, among others, met with its foreign national employees, specifically requesting that they not exacerbate the situation while it was being investigated.
Tensions in the store were extremely high, which led to Erarite requesting assistance from the South African Police Service ahead of the planned “shut down” due to concerns over safety. Following the Facebook campaign, the Department of Employment and Labour (DEL) and Department of Home Affairs (DHA) had also started scrutinising the store’s records, specifically the work visas of its foreign national employees.
Employees involved in the Facebook campaign were either dismissed or transferred to other stores. As for Gogo, he explained that his management WhatsApp group status post was a mistake, blaming his phone for freezing occasionally. Gogo apologised for his post on the management WhatsApp group, which...
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