Fact check: Viral Durban video misrepresents South Africa – DW – 07/28/2025

DW

28-07-2025

A viral video claims to show lootings in Durban as a direct result of the end of apartheid and supposed NGO influence. But the footage is from 2021 and the narrative it promotes echoes racist and conspiratorial theories.
Claim: A post on X featuring a video allegedly showing recent lootings in South Africa, and captured: "This is Durban, South Africa," is currently going viral. The post was published by Alex Jones, a US-based far-right radio host known for promoting conspiracy theories. He claims: "This is what removing 'White Oppression' and replacing it with Soros NGO systems looks like. A glimpse into the future of ALL Western countries if changes are not made fast as already seen in the SH!T HOLE blue city's across America." The post had 1.6 million views at the time of publication.
DW Fact check: Misleading
The video posted on X does not show a recent situation in Durban, a city in the east of South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province. While the footage does show a shopping street in central Durban, as the geolocation of the scene indicates, it was not recorded recently. A reverse image search by DW Fact check revealed that the video had already circulated on X and Facebook in 2021. Comparisons with official agency photos from that time confirm that the footage dates back to July 2021.
The video captures a moment during a period of unrest in South Africa, when parts of the country were engulfed in riots and widespread looting — sparked by the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma. He had been sentenced to 15 months in prison for failing to comply with a Constitutional Court order to testify before a commission investigating corruption during his presidency. His arrest triggered protests, particularly in his home province of KwaZulu-Natal, which includes Durban — the city featured in the video.
Zuma's supporters viewed his arrest as unjust and rallied to demand his release, criticizing the judiciary. However, Zuma's imprisonment was only one of several triggers for the unrest. Underlying causes included economic hardship, high youth unemployment, political disillusionment with the African National Congress (ANC), and opportunistic criminal activity. The riots ultimately left more than 300 people dead.
Since 2021, the video has resurfaced repeatedly across various social media platforms and in multiple languages. A similar claim using the same footage went viral again in March of this year.
Dhanaraj Thakur, a researcher at the Center for Democracy and Technology, sees this as part of a broader strategy: "a larger campaign with many different actors sharing similar kinds of messages," he told DW. "Some of these actors that have an intent to create misunderstandings and promote this kind of racist narrative."
The 2021 unrest has been exploited by several accounts known for spreading discriminatory content and disinformation. This is unsurprising, given that the claim implies that alleged current lootings in Durban are a direct consequence of the end of apartheid, — the system of institutionalized racial segregation that governed South Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s. In doing so, it reinforces racist and discriminatory narratives that link post-apartheid governance to urban collapse, looting, and chaos. "We see an undercurrent of racial tensions and a glorification of the apartheid system," said Juliet Nanfuka, a digital rights researcher at the Collaboration on International ICT Policy in East and Southern Africa (CIPESA). 'This is deeply concerning."
Similar forms of disinformation continue to be amplified by figures such as US President Donald Trump. Earlier this year, Trump claimed that a genocide was taking place against white farmers in South Africa — a statement for which no credible evidence or reliable data exists, as DW Fact check also debunked at the time. Billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk also echoed these claims on X , where his post received over 11 million views. Musk, who was born in South Africa, appeals to a US audience that, according to Nanfuka, is "ready to believe negative narratives about Africa."
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Other fact-checking organizations like AfricaCheck have also reported on several videos or publicationsthat were taken out of context from the 2021 unrest. "All countries experience political protests and disruptive events from time to time," said Keegan Leech, a fact-checker at Africa Check. "It's easy to misrepresent South Africa because many international audiences don't know much about the country."
In the viral post, Durban is presented as a cautionary tale — a warning that Western countries could face similar chaos if they undergo comparable political or social changes. In the US context, Thakur explains: "It's about the politics around immigration, and the idea that certain groups are supposedly incapable of governing or managing public services — and that similar outcomes will follow if they are included in society." According to him, such narratives exploit existing societal fears, "especially during times of economic uncertainty."
This type of disinformation follows a familiar playbook: reuse old footage, strip it of context, and pair it with a sensational caption to provoke outrage or boost engagement. According to Thakur, this is part of a broader social media business model. "That includes content people react to — like racist or misogynistic posts."
In this case, some versions of the post suggest that South Africa is controlled by a network of NGOs funded by George Soros — a figure frequently invoked in right-wing global conspiracy theories. Soros has become a symbol of supposed globalist threats. "Soros has become a code word — a symbol to represent everything they're against," Thakur said.
While the viral video recycles falsehoods and fuels racial nostalgia, anti-immigration rhetoric, and conspiracy theories, it has not gone unchallenged. "It was promising to see quite a big pushback in the comments that followed," said Juliet Nanfuka. "South Africans and non-South Africans trying to correct the narrative." Still, she warns, such narratives don't spread by accident — and they don't target just one country.
DW Fact check saw similar narratives pushed against people of color and religious minorities living in Europe last year.