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Road riddled with potholes in Harare, Zimbabwe? No, photo from India

IN SHORT: Zimbabwe’s road infrastructure may be crumbling, but a photo shared widely on social media of a road riddled with truly massive potholes is not from the southern African country. It shows a highway in India.

A photo circulating on social media in January 2023 shows a road more potholes than road, brown puddles of water collecting inside of them. Buildings line the road on either side. 

“Aerial view of kwaCandy kuSouthlea Park, Harare. Kuita seuri kufamba muCrate remaZai,” the caption reads. 

Roughly translated from Shona, a language spoken widely in Zimbabwe, this means: “Aerial view of Candy's in Southlea Park, Harare. It's like walking in a crate of eggs”. 

Southlea Park is a suburb in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare

The photo and caption have attracted mixed reactions, ranging from shock to disbelief

There’s plenty of evidence to show that Zimbabwe has a pothole problem. Is this further proof of the situation in the country’s capital? 

ZimbabweRoads_False

Photo shows Bihar national highway in India  

A reverse image search returned dozens of results indicating that the photo is of a road in Bihar, a state in the Southeast Asian country of India. 

The photo is a still image from drone footage of the state’s national highway. The aerial video was shot by Praveen Thakur, a journalist with Dainik Bhaskar, a Hindi-language daily newspaper in India. 

Thakur first shared the video on his Twitter account in June 2022.  

According to an article in the Hindustan Gazette, the highway has more than 100 potholes. 

There may be plenty of potholes in Zimbabwe, but this photo does not show them.

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