Provincial police spokesman deems post circulating on social media as fake news

A post doing the rounds on social media is causing quite an upstir stating that violent land grabs will begin today.

This post features the South African Police emblem as well as a stamp allegedly from the Pretoria Crime Centre.

A copy of this post was sent to the provincial police spokesman, Brig Leonard Hlathi, who confirmed that it was fake news.

Here are some pointers to verify the validity of questionable posts that you might receive or stumble across:

• Visit reliable mainstream media websites (Any Caxton publisher will suffice) if they did not carry such a big story, then surely you need to question why
• Do a quick Google search to see whether any mainstream media has deemed this circulating post a hoax
• When searching on Google, add words such as hoax or fake news to your search query
• Look at the composition of the article/post and take note of the words as well as the spelling, more often than not you can see just by reading the post that it could be untrustworthy
• Make sure about the publisher and read the about section on dodgy websites – descriptions in this section sometimes state that content contains or uses satire

Herewith the post in question: