AFP South Africa

This man was burnt alive in January, not in recent anti-foreigner protests in Johannesburg

Published on 5 September 2019 at 16:43

Attention: this post includes images showing graphic violence. Disturbing videos have been shared thousands of times on social media claiming to show a foreign national set alight by South Africans during looting and anti-migrant protests this week. The videos show a real event that is unrelated to the recent violence. They show an attack last January, when people beat and burned a man in the street for allegedly trying to steal a handbag.

This video shows a deadly fire in India, not the recent anti-foreigner protests in South Africa

Published on 4 September 2019 at 19:33

A video of people frantically jumping out of a burning building is being widely shared on social media alongside captions claiming that it shows this week’s deadly anti-foreigner violence in South Africa. But the video is not from South Africa at all -- this fire, which killed 20 teenagers, happened in India several months ago.

This video of a South African minister blasting immigration was filmed in 2017 — and he's since been replaced

Published on 4 September 2019 at 14:43

Social media users including Femi Fani-Kayode, Nigeria’s former minister of aviation, have shared a video which supposedly shows a South African government minister complaining that immigration has grown out of control. Posting the video on September 3, 2019, just as a wave of deadly xenophobic violence was gripping South Africa, Fani-Kayode accused the politician in the video of “subtly trying to justify the killing of Nigerians”. In fact, this video was filmed back in 2017; the comments were not made in relation to the current violence. It shows Bongani Mkongi, who was South Africa’s deputy police minister at the time but has since stepped down. He is not, as claimed by Fani-Kayode, the current “South African Minister of Police Affairs”.

No, this is not a real tweet by South Africa’s President Ramaphosa attacking Trump

Published on 28 August 2019 at 16:48

A screenshot shared widely on Facebook purports to show a tweet by South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa retorting to US President Donald Trump’s controversial 2018 comments on land reform in South Africa. According to the screenshot, Ramaphosa supposedly hit back with a barb about mass shootings in the United States. But this tweet was not posted by the South African leader. There is no record of Ramaphosa tweeting such a message at Trump, and the South African president’s spokeswoman confirmed that it was not posted by him.

No, Cyril Ramaphosa didn’t own the farm where he filmed this 1994 TV show with Evita Bezuidenhout

Published on 24 August 2019 at 09:32

In the 1990s, South African television aired a 12-part series called 'Funigalore'. In it, Evita Bezuidenhout, a colourful character created and performed by the satirist Pieter Dirk Uys, interviewed the new democratic government’s leaders, including Cyril Ramaphosa. A Facebook post shared nearly 3,000 times claims the interview took place on Ramaphosa’s farm in 1993 -- implying that the now president enjoyed not only affluence but close ties with prominent white personalities before the end of apartheid. Black South Africans do not know the “real” Ramaphosa, it suggests. In fact, the interview took place in 1994 -- after South Africa became democratic -- and was filmed at a farm that was not owned by Ramaphosa.

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