Posts falsely claim to show police arresting Mozambican woman in Johannesburg
- Published on November 6, 2025 at 15:50
- 2 min read
- By Tendai DUBE, AFP South Africa
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In South Africa, misinformation about foreigners is frequently shared online. Numerous social media posts are claiming to show a photo of a Mozambican woman confronting police officers in Johannesburg before being arrested. However, this is misleading; the photo was taken in 2019 when police in Cape Town forcefully removed refugee protesters at a sit-in.
“Please respect South African laws,” reads an X post published on October 28, 2025.
The post features a photo of a barefoot woman who appears to be raising her arm to strike an officer in uniform.
“A Mozambican woman Has Been Arrested in Johannesburg After Fighting With police Officers,” reads the post, adding that she was asked to produce her business permit for operating a hair salon.
“When she failed to produce the required paperwork, a confrontation broke out, leading to her arrest.”
The X post was shared by Mehmet Vefa Dag, a Cape Town politician who has made numerous claims that AFP Fact Check previously debunked, including here.
Dag is facing legal action for defamatory online comments about political leaders, only months after serving a 90-day prison sentence for another defamation case (archived here and here).
Similar claims about the photo were shared across multiple platforms, including Facebook, TikTok and YouTube.
Replies to the posts are fuelling persistent anti-foreigner sentiment in South Africa, but the claims about the woman and her purported arrest in Johannesburg are false.
Cape Town clash
A reverse image search led to an article about the arrest of about 100 people in an altercation following a court-ordered eviction to remove a group involved in a sit-in protest in Cape Town on October 30, 2019 (archived here).
The article features the same photo of the woman confronting police, credited to photographer Esa Alexander. The caption does not refer to her nationality.
The article also includes a video of the woman (archived here).
As reported by AFP, refugees who had been staging a sit-in outside the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Cape Town were forcefully removed by police on October 30, 2019 (archived here).
About 300 refugees and asylum seekers had been occupying the Waldorf Arcade – a 12-storey office block in Cape Town's central business district near the UNHCR – for weeks, seeking relocation to a different country, for fear of xenophobic violence in South Africa.
Police spokesperson Tintswalo Sibeko told AFP Fact Check on November 3, 2025, that “there is nothing reported” regarding the claim that a Mozambican woman was arrested for confronting police in Johannesburg over the lack of business permits for her salon.
However, Johannesburg authorities have recently intensified their crackdown on undocumented foreigners. In September 2025, they announced plans to demolish informal structures predominantly occupied by foreign nationals, and this month, a legal dispute arose over the eviction of informal traders (archived here and here).
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