Video shows Cape Town storm surge and heavy rains in 2017, not 2023

This article is more than one year old.
Published on July 4, 2023 at 09:42
2 min read
By James OKONG'O, AFP Kenya

Flooding hit South Africa’s port city of Cape Town in June 2023 as heavy rains pounded the region. Around the same time, a video emerged online claiming to show a flooded road and high waves along Cape Town's Sea Point promenade. But this is misleading: while the footage does show a severe storm in the city, it was recorded in 2017. AFP Fact Check already debunked the clip in 2020 during another spell of bad weather in Cape Town.

The clip was published on TikTok on June 25, 2023, and has since been shared more than 1,800 times.

"Cape Town sea point this morning," reads text placed on top of the footage.

A screenshot of the false post, taken on June 27, 2023

The clip was also shared on Facebook and Twitter in late June.

Local media reported (archived here) that heavy rains and strong winds pounded South Africa’s Western Cape province last month, resulting in heavy floods and extensive damage. Police said two bodies were recovered in the aftermath.

Western Cape gets rain during the winter months of June, July and August (archived here).

But the video does not show recent stormy weather recorded at Sea Point in Cape Town.

Old video

AFP Fact Check debunked the same video with a similar claim in 2020 when Cape Town was experiencing storms and floods.

At the time, we ran reverse image searches on the footage using the InVid WeVerify tool and found various versions of the same video had been posted on Facebook on June 7, 2017.

One of the earliest versions appeared on the Storm Report (archived here) SA Facebook page and was credited to Gareth Paul Randall. Contacted in 2020, Randall said he received the footage from a friend and "spent weeks" trying to contact the person who filmed it.

"The original was sent to me by a friend. One of his friends was the original cameraman. He never responded to any messages or calls about the clip," he had said via Facebook Messenger.

A fresh keyword search in 2023 with the words “Cape Town floods 2017” led us to a YouTube video published by local radio station Jacaranda FM, also on June 7, 2017.

At the 31-second mark in the clip, two cars are visible – an old Mercedes Benz with a Cape Town licence plate and Volkswagen registered in Gauteng Province.

A yellow and black Rawson company logo is also visible. Rawson is a property management company with branches all over South Africa.

A keyword search with the word “Rawson Cape Town” on Google found that the company has an office at Green Point in Sea Point.

A search on Google Maps found the exact street where the same cars were parked outside the Rawson office.

Comparison screengrabs from Google Maps photo (left) and the original video

On June 4, 2017, a deadly storm claimed nine lives (archived here) when it battered the Western Cape region. It was reported that severe weather triggered flooding that forced thousands to evacuate their homes.

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