On May 20, 2024, David Atherton, a journalist at The European Conservative according to his verified profile on X, posted a video claiming to show the situation in Durban, South Africa in the present day. The minute-long video is shot from a moving car and shows a large amount of trash on the side of the road, along with damage to shop windows and roadside infrastructure.
A caption within the video, which appears to have been downloaded from TikTok, claims to show the situation in Durban ‘right now’, while Atherton’s accompanying tweet also says that the video shows the situation in Durban ‘today’, presumably on 20 May when the tweet was posted. He further states this would be the situation in Britain in thirty years’ time.
Background
On June 29, 2021, the constitutional court of South Africa convicted former president Jacob Zuma to 15 months of imprisonment for failing to comply with orders from the court, inquiring into allegations of state capture, corruption and fraud in the public sector. From 9th to 18th July 2021, South Africa faced nationwide unrest and protests, many of which were in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces, following the imprisonment of Zuma.
According to a report published by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), this looting affected about 400,000 businesses and 50,000 informal traders, with 150,000 jobs put at risk. The report further estimates that these protests caused a loss of almost R50 million and 353 lives.
Verification
A reverse image search on this video yields results from 2021, showing that while the video was indeed from Durban, it is almost 3 years old, having been recorded in July 2021. A Google search for ‘Durban looting,’ limited to July 2021 provides an article published by the BBC on July 12, 2021, about protests that started after former president Jacob Zuma handed himself over to the police to serve a 15-month prison sentence after being found in contempt of court. These charges originated from Zuma’s refusal to provide testimony to Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo’s judicial commission of inquiry into alleged state capture during his term as president of South Africa.
Searching for ‘Webbers’ the shop in a sign seen in the video, on Google Maps, shows that it is a clothing store adjacent to a branch of Shoprite, a South African supermarket chain, also seen in the video. This was further confirmed using street view on Google Maps, showing a more precise location of where this video was taken on West Street, Durban.
While the video is authentic, it is not current as claimed by David Atherton.
Verdict
A post on X by journalist David Atherton claiming to show a video from May 2024 of looting and damage in Durban, South Africa has been presented in a FALSE CONTEXT. The video is indeed from Durban, but it shows the immediate aftermath of looting in 2021 following the arrest of former president Jacob Zuma, not the present day as claimed by Atherton.
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