Post impersonating S.African president apologising to Zimbabweans circulates online
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on September 7, 2023 at 16:45
- 4 min read
- By Tendai DUBE, AFP South Africa
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"He apologized. And apology Accepted (sic)," reads a Facebook post published on August 29, 2023.
At first glance, the image in the post looks like a screenshot of a post on X (formerly Twitter) shared by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
"I would like to issue an apology to the people Zimbabwe for our premature congratulation message. For now we stand with SADC's Preliminary Report and DR Mumba (sic)," it reads.
The SADC, or Southern African Development Community, is a regional economic bloc with 16 member states. Nevers Mumba is the former vice president of Zambia, who headed the group of SADC regional observers deployed for Zimbabwe's election held on August 23 and 24, 2023. They expressed a number of concerns, including the banning of opposition rallies, issues with the voter registration rolls, biased state media coverage and voter intimidation.
A number of other Facebook posts (including here and here) also shared the same claim.
Replies to these posts were mixed, with some in the comments section appearing to believe it was genuine while others knew it was fabricated.
However, the claims are false; South Africa’s Ramaphosa did not post an apology after his congratulations.
Ramaphosa’s message
The alleged X post does not appear on Ramaphosa’s official X account.
We found his original post (archived here) congratulating Mnangagwa by looking at the date and time it was supposed to have been published – namely on August 28, 2023, at 7:16 pm.
"I congratulate President Emmerson Mnangagwa on his re-election. I wish him and the people of Zimbabwe well for the upcoming term," it reads.
It appears that his original message was digitally altered to change the text and turn it into an apology.
The South African presidency's head of digital communications also dismissed the screenshot by marking it as a "fake" in a post on X (archived here).
Contacted by AFP Fact Check, the president’s spokesman Vincent Magwenya confirmed the post is "fake".
Several days after the false posts circulated, Ramaphosa attended Mnangagwa’s inauguration on September 4, 2023 (archived here). He was one of the few regional heads of state to do so.
Zimbabwe’s election
As reported by AFP, Mnangagwa -- who became Zimbabwe's second president after outmanoeuvring long-time ruler Robert Mugabe with a military-backed coup in 2017 -- won a second term on August 26, 2023, in a vote that international observers said fell short of democratic standards (archived here).
Mnangagwa, 80, won 52.6 percent of the ballots according to official results.
"South Africa is conscious that these elections took place under a difficult economic environment due to the burdening sanctions which the people of Zimbabwe continue to unjustly endure," read a congratulatory statement issued by the South African presidency on the same day.
The statement also explained that South Africa had taken note of the preliminary pronouncements by the invited International Observers Missions, including the scathing report by the SADC observers (archived here).
As reported by AFP, this was a rare rebuke from the bloc whose observers usually endorse polls in the member countries (archived here).
The United States also condemned what it called bias against the opposition in Zimbabwe's election and said it was conferring with regional partners about how to approach Mnangagwa (archived here).
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