4 March 2022, News24, Iavan Pijoos
“We do know that concerning and at times harmful content was being spread, which appears to have contributed to the anger and facilitated the incitement to violence and disorder,” Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) director, William Bird, told the commission.
Bird said one of the biggest failures during the unrest was the state’s inability to respond to the violence.
“One of the biggest problems that we saw in the unrest was the failure by various bodies and non-government [entities] to communicate what was going on. It was only when media started to get there, we started to get a better sense of what was going on.
“As a result, there was a clear sense that the state had no answer to anything. The police and intelligence services were nowhere to be found,” he said.