Reports circulating on social media that Zimbabwe illegally connected to ESKOM for years and used electricity worth R2 Billion during that time are fake.
This was published by South Africa’s Ihlanya News which is a satire and jokes site. The article read:
The Zimbabwean government had been powering almost half of their country from illegal connections and Eskom had been trying to figure out where the lost electricity is actually going without success until the past weekend.
Zimbabwe had an Electricity deal with Eskom in which they are defaulting by over R300 million rands which is nothing compared to the electricity they had been stealing for years without Eskom’s knowledge.
The account that posted this article is fake, however, the article had gone viral as people were sharing it all over the social media:
Does Zimbabwe have “illegal connections” to Eskom electricity as claimed by this article being shared widely online? Fake news. Ihlaya News is a parody website, as indicated on both the site and its FB page. Clue? The site’s name is derived from the Zulu word for “jokes”.
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