South Africa: No, Viral Photo of Protestors in South Africa 'Looting Coffins' Is Fake

IN SHORT: Service delivery protests in and around Bloemfontein, South Africa in May 2026 did escalate into looting which targeted immigrants. However, one particularly dramatic image shared on social media - supposedly showing looters making off with a coffin and headstone - is an AI-generated fake.

On 25 May 2026, service delivery protests in and around the city of Bloemfontein in South Africa's Free State province escalated into opportunistic looting. The looting targeted stores owned by immigrants to South Africa, amidst increasing xenophobic rhetoric blaming migrants for issues like high unemployment rates and poor service delivery.

The Bloemfontein service delivery protests were organised by a group called the National Service Delivery Forum, or NSDF, although social media users have often conflated the looting with xenophobic protests organised by March and March. This is an anti-immigrant organisation that has also organised several public protests in 2026 and has been accused of fuelling "hostility and violence towards migrants" by several South African human rights organisations.

One particularly striking image, supposedly captured during the looting in Bloemfontein, shows a group of men carrying a coffin and a marble headstone past burning debris on a street. On social media networks such as Facebook, Instagram and X, users claimed that this was a photograph taken in Bloemfontein, sometimes specifically in the suburb of Rocklands, an area which saw heavy looting. But this is false.

While coffins have been stolen from funeral parlours during previous incidents of looting in South Africa, there is no record of such an event taking place in Bloemfontein in May 2026. The "photograph" is actually a convincing fake.

No evidence of coffins, headstones looted in Bloemfontein protests

In July 2021, protests against the arrest of former president Jacob Zuma escalated into looting and violence, particularly in the KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces of South Africa. Funeral parlours were targets of looting during those incidents, and South African police reported recovering stolen coffins, along with other items, in connection with that looting. So there is a precedent in the country for this kind of unusual crime.

However, there are no reliable reports of the looting of coffins or other items from funeral parlours during the Bloemfontein protests. Free State police spokesperson Thabo Covane told Africa Check: "Yes, shops were looted, but what you see there is an exaggeration."

So where did the image of the men with the coffin and headstone come f