PARTLY FALSE: This image does not show South Africa’s Minister of Sports and Fitness
The image is of Thembelani Thulas Nxesi, the South African Minister of Employment and Labour who formerly headed the sports docket.
An image shared on Twitter claiming to show South Africa’s ‘Minister of Sports and Fitness’ is PARTLY FALSE.
The image of a man speaking into a microphone is posted alongside text that reads: “South African Minister Of Sports AND FITNESS. I just thought of sharing, in case you don’t know him”.
“South Africa’s Minister of sports and fitness.. This man needs chocolate cos..” it reads.
However, according to the South African government website, there is no ministry for sports and fitness. There is, instead, the Ministry of Sports, Arts and Culture.
Additionally, the man in the photo does not resemble the current Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture, Nkosinathi Emmanuel ‘Nathi’ Mthethwa.
A reverse image search brings up an article by mzansitimesonline revealing that the man in the claim photo is Thembelani Thulas Nxesi, the South African Minister of Employment and Labour.
Nxesi previously served as the country’s Minister of Sports and Recreation from 31 March 2017 to 26 February 2018. This tweet dated 13 December 2017, shows Nxesi speaking to a television crew. The photo description shows that the minister was photographed attending a South African schools sports championships. The Twitter account which shared the image bears the name of Nxesi’s Media Liaison Officer, Sabelo Mali.
PesaCheck has examined the image shared on Twitter claiming to show South Africa’s ‘Minister of Sports and Fitness and finds it to be PARTLY FALSE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Simon Muli and edited by PesaCheck chief copy editor Rose Lukalo.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck’s acting managing editor Doreen Wainainah.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.
