This footage shows military equipment being transported in Namibia
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on May 29, 2020 at 18:50
- 5 min read
- By Tendai DUBE, AFP South Africa
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A Facebook post shared the video on May 17, 2020, along with a caption that uses obscenities to describe South Africa as being in trouble. It reads: “hundreds of armed cars and tanks offloaded in cape town and thousands of Chinese troops in the twilight hour’s of the morning (sic).”
Similar claims are shared on Facebook here and here using the same video as well as several photos showing military vehicles atop transport carriers.
But in a thread of tweets on the same day, defence expert and director of African Defence Review Darren Olivier explained why he believed the video is from Namibia and “nothing to worry about”.
“I'm fairly certain this is a normal delivery of vehicles for the Botswana Defence Force. Because Botswana is landlocked, it has to have vehicles delivered by sea to a neighbouring country & sent overland by road or rail and it often uses South African ports,” he wrote.
Olivier said the wrapped vehicles appeared to be MOWAG Piranhas, which the Botswana Defence Force (BDF) already operates.
“In 2016 it ordered an additional 45 Piranhas, which have been arriving in small batches over the past few years in convoys just like this,” wrote Olivier.
Olivier said the trucks seem to be part of the “MICA VL ground-based air defence system, which we know that the BDF recently acquired, and the Panhard VBL looks to have a Mistral launcher assembly fitted which again is something we know the BDF has recently acquired.”
A Defence Web article on August 3, 2017, corroborates this in a report about Botswana purchasing more than 300 million euros worth of military hardware from France in 2016, including the aforementioned MICA-VL and Mistral missiles.
As Olivier noted, there is no indication of when the video was recorded.
But on May 9, 2018, The Namibian Ministry of Defence shared a press release announcing BDF military equipment would be moving from Walvis Bay on the Trans-Kalahari highway to Mamuno Border Post on the border with Botswana from May 9-10, 2018.
A few of the misleading posts, such as here, also share the image below of a truck with a yellow number plate. It starts with an “N” and ends with a “W”, which indicates a Windhoek, Namibia number plate.
Captain Jaco Theunissen, joint operations division spokesperson at the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), dismissed the claims made in the misleading Facebook posts to South Africa’s News24.
"This is fake news. I saw some of these messages on social media myself. One of the videos, for example, was taken when military equipment was delivered in Walvis Bay nearly three years ago. In that instance, the equipment was destined for Botswana and the SANDF was not involved," said Theunissen.
And according to the electronic edition of the Botswana Gazette published on May 20, 2020, the BDF had in that week received the second instalment of its war equipment from French company MBDA.
“Yes, it is true we have received some of our military equipment this week,” Acting BDF Commander, Gotsileene Morake, told the Botswana Gazette. “It is just half of the consignment we ordered four years ago. We are expecting the last batch sometime next year. It takes two years to design these vehicles.”
AFP contacted the BDF for comment but has not yet received a response.
Olivier and a Twitter follower used the railway-level crossing sign in the video, labelled “High Risk Accident Zone Ahead” under the image of a train, to deduce that the location was at this Shell Service Station in Walvis Bay, Namibia.
As the Twitter user points out, a railway line can be seen northwest of the station in Google Maps satellite imagery. Other elements in the video, such as roads, buildings and trees, also match the satellite imagery.
AFP Fact Check confirmed the location with a Walvis Bay resident who sent pictures of the scene that match the visuals in the video -- such as the palm tree, the red flag and the railway warning sign on a small island.
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