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Viral posts claim a “Mozambican woman” was arrested in Johannesburg after fighting police, but the photo is from a 2019 Cape Town eviction.
- Viral posts claim a “Mozambican woman” was arrested in Johannesburg after fighting police, but the photo is from a 2019 Cape Town eviction.
- The image shows a clash during the removal of refugees staging a sit-in outside the UNHCR offices, not a salon permit dispute.
- Police say there has been “nothing reported” about such an arrest in Johannesburg, despite rising tensions over operations targeting undocumented foreigners.
“Please respect South African laws,” reads an X post published on 28 October 2025.
The post features a photo of a barefoot woman who appears to be raising her arm to strike an officer in uniform.
“A Mozambican woman Has Been Arrested in Johannesburg After Fighting With police Officers (sic),” reads the post, adding that she was asked to produce her business permit for operating a hair salon.
“When she failed to produce the required paperwork, a confrontation broke out, leading to her arrest.”
Screenshot of the misleading X post, taken on November 4, 2025
The X post was shared by, among others, Mehmet Vefa Dag, a Cape Town politician who has made numerous claims that AFP Fact Check had previously debunked.
Dag is facing legal action for defamatory online comments about political leaders, only months after serving a 90-day prison sentence for another defamation case.
Similar claims about the photo were shared across multiple platforms, including Facebook, TikTok and YouTube.
Replies to the posts are fuelling persistent anti-foreigner sentiment in South Africa, but the claims about the woman and her purported arrest in Johannesburg are false.
Cape Town clash
A reverse image search led to an article about the arrest of about 100 people in an altercation following a court-ordered eviction to remove a group involved in a sit-in protest in Cape Town on 30 October 2019.
The article features the same photo of the woman confronting police, credited to photographer Esa Alexander. The caption does not refer to her nationality.
Screenshot of the original photo on Times Live, published on October 30, 2019
The article also includes a video of the woman.
As reported by AFP, refugees who had been staging a sit-in outside the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Cape Town were forcefully removed by police on 30 October 2019.
About 300 refugees and asylum seekers had been occupying the Waldorf Arcade – a 12-storey office block in Cape Town’s central business district near the UNHCR – for weeks, seeking relocation to a different country, for fear of xenophobic violence in South Africa.
Police spokesperson Tintswalo Sibeko told AFP Fact Check on 3 November 2025 that “there is nothing reported” regarding the claim that a Mozambican woman was arrested for confronting police in Johannesburg over the lack of business permits for her salon.
However, Johannesburg authorities have recently intensified their crackdown on undocumented foreigners. In September 2025, they announced plans to demolish informal structures predominantly occupied by foreign nationals, and this month, a legal dispute arose over the eviction of informal traders.
