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Kate Wilkinson and Sintha Chiumia

Kate Wilkinson and Sintha Chiumia

Latest fact-checks

Is SA worse off now than 19 years ago? The facts behind THAT Facebook post

In November 2013, a list of 16 claims about South Africa under the African National Congress - all of them negative - began doing the rounds on Facebook. Within days the list had attracted more than 2,000 comments, been “liked” 1,600 times and had been shared on the Facebook pages of more than...

Are 30,000 children really 'trafficked' in South Africa every year? The claim exaggerates the problem

Human trafficking is rife in South Africa, if recent press reports are to be believed, and children are at particularly high risk of being traded and prostituted.As many as “30,000 kids trafficked in SA” read a headline in The Times in October 2013. A similar article appeared in the Pretoria Ne...

Are most estimates of what strikes cost the SA economy accurate? Probably not. Take them with a big pinch of salt

The South African spring is also sometimes called “strike season”. And, as in other years, estimates of the cost of recent and on-going strikes to the country’s economy have been widely reported.Are the estimates accurate? What are they based on? Should those who report them explain? We were a...

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