Birthplace edited minutes after cabinet announcement
Wikipedia is a free and open-source encyclopaedia maintained by volunteers on the internet. Anyone can edit a Wikipedia page, although other editors may quickly revert – change back – the edits if they disagree.
But every single published change to a Wikipedia page is stored in the page’s history, with its own online address.
Using the revision history tab on Schreiber’s Wikipedia page, we found that it was first created on 21 April 2020. The original sidebar summary says he was born in “Namaqualand, Cape Province, South Africa” in 1988.
In 1996, the old Cape province was divided into the Northern Cape, Eastern Cape, Western Cape and the western part of North West. Today, the broad Namaqualand region extends southwards from Namibia into South Africa’s Northern and Western Cape.
Schreiber’s place of birth remained unchanged on Wikipedia for more than four years. Then came the night of Ramaphosa’s cabinet announcement.
The cabinet appointments were expected to be announced at 21:00 on 30 June 2024, but Ramaphosa was almost an hour late. As the nation waited for the announcement, an unnamed Wikipedia user changed Schreiber’s birthplace from Namaqualand to “Borrowdale, Harare Zimbabwe” at 21:12.
Borrowdale is one of the wealthiest suburbs in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital.
A Wikipedia “edit war” soon ensued, with users reverting the change, others putting it back, and so on. At one point, Schreiber’s nationality was changed from “South African” to “Zimbabwean]]on”.
The page was eventually protected from arbitrary editing on the afternoon of 1 July. The current page (as of 3 July 2024) says Schreiber was born in “Piketberg, Cape Province”. Piketberg in today’s Western Cape is part of the Namaqualand region.
All of Schreiber’s other online biographies put his birthplace in Namaqualand, South Africa. There is no evidence that South Africa’s new home affairs minister was born in Harare or is “a Zimbabwean foreigner”.
Wikipedia is an invaluable online source of information. But it can be misused to create disinformation.
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