A legal migrant from Zimbabwe was awarded R17 million in damages after a court found South Africa’s health department “100% responsible” for her child’s severe disability. She is not the woman in the photo, shot nowhere near South Africa.
MARY ALEXANDER • 20 JUNE 2024
“CAME TO SA ON A WHEELBARROW AND LEFT WITH R17 MILLION!”
That’s the common caption for a photo of a man carrying a heavily pregnant woman in a wheelbarrow, circulating on social media in South Africa since late May 2024.*
It continues: “The court has awarded R17,2 million to an undocumented Zimbabwean woman whose newborn suffered cerebral palsy as a result of negligence by hospital staff at public hospital in Limpopo.”
One user making the claim is the X/Twitter account Dudula News. The account is allied to South Africa’s anti-migrant social movement Operation Dudula. Its post has been liked more than 1,000 times.
Zimbabwe lies on the northern border of South Africa’s Limpopo province. Operation Dudula opposes the migration of people from elsewhere on the continent into South Africa. In isiZulu, “dudula” means “force out” or “push back”.
Supporters of the movement complain that migrants take local jobs and use public services such as healthcare.
But does the photo really show a pregnant woman who came to South Africa in a wheelbarrow, and left the country with R17 million after a Limpopo hospital’s negligence left her newborn brain damaged?
Photo snapped in Zimbabwe capital in 2008
A reverse image search reveals that while the pregnant woman in the wheelbarrow was Zimbabwean, the photo doesn’t show her “coming to South Africa”. More than this, the photo was shot in December 2008 – almost 16 years ago.
It was taken by veteran Associated Press photographer Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi. On the AP Newsroom website, its caption reads: “Misheck Bunyira carries his wife, Janet in the late stages of pregnancy to hospital by wheelbarrow in Epworth, Harare, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2008.”
Harare is Zimbabwe’s capital, and far from South Africa. The woman was being taken by wheelbarrow to a hospital in Zimbabwe, not South Africa.
In April 2024 Dudula News posted the same photo on X with the caption: “ZIMBABWE: MAN TRANSPORTS WIFE TO SA HOSPITAL! A Zimbabwean man with a good education wheeled his pregnant wife to a hospital in Musina.”
Musina is a town in Limpopo on the Zimbabwe border. But again, the claim is not true.
North West high court orders damages for 2013 negligence
There is some truth to the claim that a woman originally from Zimbabwe whose newborn was left brain damaged by hospital negligence was recently awarded R17 million in damages by a South African court.
But the negligence was in 2013, the hospital in North West – the province to the west of Limpopo – and the woman is not “undocumented”. And she’s not the woman in the photo.
On 16 May 2024 the North West high court ordered the head of the province’s health department to pay the mother of a severely brain-damaged 12-year-old child R17.3 million for the negligence of the hospital where the child was born.
The child suffered oxygen deprivation at birth, cannot sit unsupported and cannot speak. The court found the health department was “100% responsible” for the child’s disability.
The mother came to South Africa from Zimbabwe in 2005. She has had her Zimbabwean exemption permit since 2010, and so is not “undocumented”.
The health department’s lawyers had argued that she should be paid lesser damages because she is a Zimbabwean citizen. This was rejected by the judge, who said South Africa’s constitution gave equal protection to all.
The false and xenophobic claim mangles two separate events.
* Some Facebook and Instagram users may have deleted their posts after Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program rated their claims as untrue.
Published by Africa Check on 24 June 2024