FACT-CHECK: Sorry Zimbabwe, this road project is not in South Sudan
A photo of a road construction project allegedly undertaken in South Sudan has sparked debates among Zimbabweans on social media.
Prominent personalities with huge followings have shared the photo with many but one implying that it was taken from South Sudan.
The claims
On 31st January 2022, Nick Mangwana, the government permanent secretary for the Ministry of Information, Publicity, and Broadcasting Services, tweeted the photo and claimed it was one of the road rehabilitation projects currently funded by the government of Zimbabwe under President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Mr Mangwana wrote: “Last year, incessant rains damaged our roads across the length and breadth of the country. Govt launched ERRP2 to rehabilitate the damaged roads and bridges. This year, zvatanga futi, and Govt remains relentless in its efforts to restore normalcy on our road surfaces.”
Twibos, as Zimbabweans Twitter users call themselves, threw Mangwana under the bus for “disseminating untruthful information”.
Professor Jonathan Moyo, Zimbabwe’s former minister of information who also served in the higher and tertiary education docket, contemptuously replied and rubbished Mr Mangwana’s claim and questioned why he did not get fired.
“Secretary Nick Mangwana so, like some crazy folks in Ghana, you too suffer from the Juba-Rumbek Syndrome? Sad, because as a government spokesperson you have an obligation to disseminate truthful information about govt road projects. Why should you not resign or be fired for this?” Moyo tweeted.
Another prominent personality, Hopewell Chin’ono, a renowned investigative journalist, joined in the debate. Like Moyo, Chin’ono also claimed the photo was ‘stolen’ from a road construction project in Juba.
“The Zimbabwe’s Government’s spokesman Nick Mangwana has done it again. He “stole” a picture of a road being constructed in Juba, in South Sudan, and misled his poor followers into believing that it is a road being constructed in Zimbabwe,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
All claims by these public figures accompanying the photo were shared hundreds of times by their loyal followers.
False claims
However, none of them was right on the origin of the photo. A TinEye reverse image search shows that the picture first appeared online in October 2016. It was published by GeoSurv, a construction company in Australia, as a stock photo with insufficient information on where the construction project was undertaken.
In 2016, Mnangagwa was not the President of Zimbabwe, Mangwana was not the press secretary in the ministry of information.
Within the same year, South Sudan was undergoing unprecedented political instability so much that all developmental projects were paused.
Conclusion
After reviewing over 30 copies of the image online, we found no evidence that links the construction project to Zimbabwe. Equally, the reverse image such results do not indicate the picture was taken in South Sudan.
Therefore, the claim that the picture was taken from the South Sudanese capital, Juba, is false.
