A truck driver thought he could get more followers by lying about a lion that was strolling freely on the N10.
It has ended in tears for him. The dramatic night-time visual of the lion caused great alarm at the weekend, but by late Sunday it died down after the provincial transport department said the animal had been “recaptured”.
However, trucker Phumlani Masina said in a statement, and confirmed to The Herald in a phone call yesterday, that it was all a fabrication.
“I made a fake video of a lion that I ‘saw’ between Cradock and Middelburg,” he said.
“I obtained the video from the internet and I edited it with my TikTok account.
“The whole video of the lion was false and a hoax.
“I apologise for my actions that caused panic and distress to all the people,” he said.
Masina’s boss, Johan Bezuidenhout, the operations manager at Lenata and Northstar transport companies, confirmed Masina was one of his truck drivers and that he had obtained the statement from him after he had investigated concerns raised by Cradock game farm Tam Safaris.
“It seems after he had edited the video he sent it on to other truckers and that is how it spread.”
Irvin Tam, co-owner of Tam Safaris, which was involved in the search for the lion on Sunday after the initial alert was posted on a Cradock community group on Saturday night, said he just wanted the real story to come out.
“We couldn’t find anything even after putting up a helicopter for five hours.
“We were also not missing any animals and then we saw it was a TikTok video and we became sceptical and managed to track down the culprit.”
He said Tam Safaris had pursued the matter because they were concerned that people who had been following the story would think the “recaptured” lion was theirs.
“If there was an escaped lion or a recaptured lion it’s hardly something we would have been able to hide.
“All the farmers and security people were there on the scene.”
Wildlife Ranching SA provincial chair John Hurter said: “There was no breakout of a lion as far as I am aware.”
Eastern Cape transport department spokesperson Unathi Binqose said the department had first heard about the lion from their officials who posted about it on one of the department’s WhatsApp groups.
Wary about peddling fake news, he had contacted traffic officers in the Cradock area about the matter
Source: https://www.heraldlive.co.za/news/2022-02-25-tiktokking-trucker-confesses-to-hoax-highway-lion-video/
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