This video of floods in South Africa dates back several years

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on June 18, 2020 at 14:08
  • Updated on June 18, 2020 at 14:18
  • 2 min read
  • By Tendai DUBE, AFP South Africa

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A video circulating on social media purports to show recent flooding in Cape Town, South Africa. While the footage does show flooding in the southern city, it was already circulating online in 2017, a year marked by a deadly storm.

The short clip shared in a Facebook post on June 11, 2020, has garnered more than 900 shares. It was shot from a moving car, showing severe weather and a massive wave coming from the sea.

“Seapoint this morning”, the caption reads.

A screenshot taken on June 12, 2020 of the misleading Facebook post

The video was also shared in posts here and here on June 11, 2020, with claims that it showed recent flooding. 

A cold front brought snow, gale-force winds and flooding to the Western Cape region earlier this month, leaving several residents of informal settlements in Cape Town homeless.

However, this video is not recent. AFP ran a reverse image search on the footage using the InVid WeVerify tool and found various versions of the same video posted in June 2017.

We also ran a keyword search of the phrase "Sea Point flood" on Facebook and traced the earliest post to June 7, 2017.

Deadly storm

An intense storm claimed nine lives, including a three-year-old, when it battered the Western Cape region on June 4, 2017. The severe weather, which followed one of the worst droughts for 100 years, triggered flash flooding and fires, and forced thousands to evacuate their homes.

The earliest version of the video AFP Fact Check found was posted on the Storm Report SA Facebook page and is credited to Gareth Paul Randall. We contacted Randall, who said he received the footage from a friend and "spent weeks" trying to contact the person who shot it.

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

One photo essay published on June 8, 2017 features a picture with a Shell Select petrol station in the background. The same station can be seen in the video.

A photo showing another angle of the area compared with a screenshot from the video

AFP also captured some of the bad weather in the region in June 2017 in this photograph below.

People watch as waves of foam and seawater crash into Three Anchor Bay in Cape Town on June 7, 2017, as an intense storm hits South Africa's west coast. (AFP / Rodger Bosch)

 

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