|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Claim: A viral video circulating on Facebook and X shows a South African taxi driver calling on protesters to halt the ongoing “March and March” movement, claiming the demonstrations have crippled the country’s taxi industry and left drivers without passengers.
Verdict: False! The viral video is AI-generated. An analysis using Hive AI rated the footage 99.9% likely to be AI-generated and indicated it was likely created using Google’s Veo 3 video generation model. Visual inconsistencies within the footage further support this finding. Although some taxi operators have genuinely expressed concerns over the impact of the protests on their businesses, the viral video itself is fabricated.
Full Text
As South Africa continues to witness demonstrations associated with the “March and March” movement, social media has become flooded with videos claiming to show the economic effects of the protests on ordinary citizens.
One such video, posted on Facebook by Fixertainment, a page with more than 180,000 followers, portrays a man dressed as a taxi driver appealing to protesters to suspend the demonstrations because they are hurting the transport industry.
The video was uploaded on July 27, 2026, and had generated significant engagement at the time of this fact-check, amassing 101,000 views, 3,100 reactions, 199 shares, and 152 comments.
In the video, the supposed taxi driver says:
“Please put a pause on this thing of marching. We all know that you are getting money through this. But chasing foreigners, you are destroying the taxi industry. Look, now we don’t have any passengers. They’re all gone. How are we going to feed our families? Let’s think about tomorrow before we do something.”
The same clip later surfaced on X after being shared by the account @historyfactou on July 31, 2026, with the caption:
“Frustrated taxi operators who have lost business. None is going to work, and none is using transport to and from work. They have car loans to pay back. Repossessions shall come in. Some will go broke. Afrika Borwa is on the brink of collapse.”
The X post also attracted considerable engagement, garnering 265 comments, 184 likes, 83 reposts (retweets), and 77 bookmarks.
The video prompted mixed reactions online.
While many users accepted it as authentic, others questioned whether it had been created using artificial intelligence. This prompted DUBAWA to verify the footage’s authenticity.
Verification
DUBAWA subjected the video to both forensic analysis and AI detection.
An analysis using Hive AI, an AI content-detection tool, found that the video is 99.9% likely to have been generated by artificial intelligence.
The tool further indicated that the footage was likely created with Google’s Veo 3, one of the latest AI video-generation models capable of producing realistic-looking human speech and movement.
Beyond the AI detection results, the video itself exhibits several visual artefacts commonly associated with AI-generated content.
A frame-by-frame examination shows that people in the background suddenly appear and disappear without natural movement. Some individuals emerge in one frame and vanish in the next, despite the camera angle remaining largely unchanged. These inconsistencies are characteristic of AI-generated videos.
The footage also lacks continuous motion. Instead of a naturally flowing recording, it appears to be composed of several short AI-generated clips stitched together, resulting in abrupt transitions and unnatural continuity between scenes. DUBAWA further reviewed the Facebook page that published the video.
The review revealed that Fixertainment has consistently shared AI-generated videos relating to South African political and social developments. A significant proportion of the page’s recent content consists of synthetic videos advancing narratives around the ongoing protests, indicating a deliberate pattern of using AI-generated media to drive engagement and amplify particular narratives. More can be seen here, here, here, and here.
However, the video’s fabricated nature should not be conflated with the broader issue it attempts to address.
Evidence shows that some taxi operators have genuinely voiced concerns that the protests have affected passenger numbers and reduced their daily income. These concerns are real, but they were not expressed in the viral video under review, which is entirely AI-generated.
Conclusion
The viral video purporting to show a South African taxi driver pleading with protesters to suspend the “March and March” demonstrations is not authentic. Hive AI assessed the video as 99.9% likely to be AI-generated and indicated it was likely produced using Google’s Veo 3.
