AFP Nigeria

These are old photos of a coffin-shaped computer — not Robert Mugabe’s ‘17 billion casket'

Published on 13 September 2019 at 17:26

Posts shared thousands of times on Facebook and Twitter in Nigeria claim to show pictures of late Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe’s “17 billion casket”. This is false; the photographs can be found online as early as 2007 and show a rather unusual computer case, made in the form of a coffin.

No, the presidents of Rwanda, DR Congo and Malawi did not boycott the World Economic Forum in South Africa over anti-foreigner attacks

Published on 12 September 2019 at 15:04

Posts shared thousands of times on social media claim that the presidents of Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Malawi boycotted this month’s World Economic Forum (WEF) summit in Cape Town in protest against xenophobic attacks in South Africa. Officials from the South African and Rwandan governments, as well as the WEF, have denied these claims, saying these absences were already planned before the unrest broke out on September 1.

No, South Africa’s Nigeria embassy has not been hit by a bomb blast

Published on 11 September 2019 at 14:36

A video, supposedly showing the aftermath of a bomb blast at the South African embassy in Nigeria, has been viewed tens of thousands of times on social media in recent days. But there has been no such bombing, and Nigerian police as well as the minister of information dismissed the claims as “fake news”. While the video has spread in recent days during a wave of attacks against foreign-owned shops in South Africa, all available evidence indicates that it shows a bomb blast at a shopping mall in Abuja in 2014.

Misleading social media posts are fuelling the tensions over xenophobic attacks in South Africa

Published on 5 September 2019 at 18:58

Misleading social media posts about the anti-migrant violence gripping South Africa have been spreading across the continent, fuelling tensions that have already sparked reprisal attacks in Nigeria. Some posts purporting to show the violence contain old images, or footage from a different country altogether. Here’s a round-up of the various posts we’ve fact-checked.

Xenophobic violence in South Africa: Watch out, old photos are circulating online

Published on 4 September 2019 at 17:59

As emotions run high over deadly xenophobic violence in South Africa, various misleading photos and videos have been circulating online. Among them are two photos showing men fighting in the street, which have been used by various Nigerian websites. While both pictures show unrest linked to immigration in South Africa, neither of the photos is recent -- both of them were taken in previous years and show earlier waves of xenophobic violence.

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