Publication of false claims showing bread sold by foreign shopkeepers in South Africa

Shared hundreds of times, the post includes an image of a loaf of bread in a package that appears to contain a mouse.

AFP Fact Check unmasked a false claim about immigrants posted by the same user X in July.

Likewise, the photo in the last claim has no relation to South Africa.

Delivery app drama

A reverse image search led to reports here It is here about a delivery app customer in India who allegedly found a mouse inside a bag of bread (archived here It is here).

On February 3, 2023, user X “Nitin Arora” he wrote about a “very unpleasant experience with @letsblinkit”, describing the discovery of a mouse inside a packaged loaf of bread as “alarming” (archived here).

Blinkit is an India-based instant delivery company for shopping.

The post included a photo of the mouse and bread, as well as screenshots that apparently showed the user’s interaction with Blinkit’s customer service team.

The post also featured an image of a digitally altered billboard and a joke in Hindi that said, “If you ask for bread, you get a mouse.”

According to one of the articles, the fake billboard was a tongue-in-cheek joke. reference to a viral campaign the company participated in a month earlier (archived here).

The yellow billboard originally said: “Order milk, we will deliver.”

A week after the viral report was published, Blinket’s department head customer support said the company “had already taken swift action and removed the partner store’s list” (archived here).

Anti-immigrant sentiment

Despite having one of the largest in the world unemployment rates, South Africa attracts many economic migrants from other parts of the continent (archived here).

The influx, coupled with a grim economic outlook, has led to sporadic outbursts of anti-immigrant violence in recent years.

Local and foreign owners of spaza shops – small informal convenience stores – have also been in a predicament decades dispute about who should own these points of sale (archived here It is here).

Last October, spaza shop owners were accused of selling expired or counterfeit products following a series of deaths and food poisoning cases involving children (filed here).

Later that month, two brothers aged three and four also he died after allegedly eating snacks purchased from a spaza shop in the Free State province of South Africa (archived here It is here).

At the time, South African law enforcement officials invaded spaza shops and seized or destroyed counterfeit or expired products – in some cases leading to the arrest of undocumented foreign store owners (archived here It is here).

There were also reports of Somali businessmen being shot dead in different parts of the country in February 2023 It is December 2023 (filed here It is here).

Election candidates used this burning issue to fan the flames of hate and misinformation online during this year’s campaign ahead of the May 29 presidential election (archived here).