The Twitter account @uLerato_Pillay hides its afrophobia behind a thin veneer of nationalism.

In an earlier investigation for @DFRLab, @wildknight and I traced the origins of the account to pin a real name to it:

Sfiso J Gwala https://medium.com/dfrlab/afrophobic-south-african-twitter-account-connected-to-nationalist-political-party-7e7205cc8987

Gwala's tweets frequently contain afrophobic sentiment directed at Nigerians and Zimbabweans living in SA.

Hashtags it amplifies are inherently nationalist and serve as dogwhistles for even further afrophobic sentiments.

(For example: shortly after my piece on #TracyZille was published last week, Gwala attempted to take credit for contributing to the investigation, and claimed without evidence that Matumba was a Zimbabwean national.

He deleted his tweet after being called out and named.)

He has also previously fomented sentiments against @NalediChirwa and @zilevandamme based on their heritages.

(Note the difference in tone in his earlier tweets with Van Damme)

The account was created on 1 November 2020 and immediately embarked on an aggressive follow-back campaign.

These "I Follow Back" campaigns generate an artificially large following fairly quickly.

The tone of the account was entirely different to the one seen today.

Early on @uLerato_Pillay also still admitted to being a black man.

An image stolen from @lvteef was used as a selfie in one of Gwala's early replies.

There is evidence that the account changed usernames after it was created, often seen in cached copies of old tweets.

The account was initially called @sfiso82648954 (blue) but changed its username to @uLerato_Pillay (red) somewhere between 7 and 11 November 2019.

This is also apparent from search results for @sfiso82648954 returning tweets by @uLerato_Pillay - see for yourself here:

https://twitter.com/search?q=%40sfiso82648954&s=09

Twitter assigns an internal ID to each user which you can track despite name and handle changes.

A DSTV petition, created by a FB account "Sfiso J Gwala", called on DSTV to drop its prices earlier this year.

Checking the page source showed that @uLerato_Pillay shared the petition only 2 minutes after it was created.

Since Friday, the FB account has been deactivated

@uLerato_Pillay also interacted often with the (now suspended) account @SfisoGwala_SA, an account that changed its name to @HisMaineN shortly before being suspended.

Although @MarioKhumalo and the South African First political party denies knowing who @uLeratoPillay is, he apparently knows him well enough to know which of the numerous accounts are real, and which are fake.

Both SAF and Khumalo also frequently interact with the account.

In a country with a history of afrophobic violence, a "faceless" account with a history of deception (like @uLerato_Pillay) has no place holding a match to a powderkeg.

When tensions escalate, and someone needs to be held accountable, Sfiso J Gwala will be nowhere to be found.