Old photos and 2018 attacks on South African female driver drivers recently shared

Social media users recently shared claims of a brutal attack on female train drivers, linking it to security issues in the South African railway industry. These posts include images of damaged trains. However, the context is misleading: While incidents involving train drivers did occur, it happened seven years ago when local media reported a wave of attacks on Pretoria trains. The image was also related to the unrest in 2018.

“The Metrorail Services in Pretoria to Piernaspurt were recently affected by crime and hijacking,” the Facebook post published on March 17, 2025 read.

“This is after a female train driver became a victim of a hijacking, allegedly attacked and hit a brick in a naked body and dragged into a nearby bush in Pretoria-Pienaarspoort Line on Wednesday, March 12, 2025.”

The post continued that some trains were damaged the next day.

The corridor from Pretoria to Binelas is about 53 kilometers long and has 16 train stations managed by the state-owned passenger railway South Africa (PRASA). Mamelodi is a township in the northeast of Pretoria.

The post includes a photo of a blue and white motorcycle marked “010” with a damaged windshield.

Other posts that made similar claims were shared thousands of times on Tiktok, Facebook and X in March 2025.

However, these posts are misleading.

Violence in 2018

Reverse image search shows photos of damaged trains are at least seven years old.

This photo is used to illustrate an article published in 2018 (here and here) involving a series of attacks on the Metrorail train in Prasa and workers in Pretoria (archived here and here).

Screenshots of the March 2018 “Time” article

In each article, photos of the damaged train are described as photos provided by Prasa.

In one of the articles published on March 15, 2018, local news website Sowetanlive mentioned the brutal attack on the corridor of Pretoria-Pienaarspoort.

This article details how to hit the head with a brick, exposed and drag into nearby bushes.

The violence in Pretoria in 2018 is part of a wider attack on delayed commuter frustration (archived here).

This frustration has been in destruction and crime for years, especially in the corridors of Pretoria-Pienaarspoort, making multiple train stations inoperable (archive here).

South Africa’s Railway Safety Regulatory Authority (RSR) said through AFP fact-check contact that one of the reasons why the corridor line is “particularly fragile” is its proximity to the Pienaarspoort solution.

Tensions in the region have been growing for years due to underserving government services, but a state-run project that provides 5,000 houses has exacerbated this (archived here).

Now, protesters and political parties accuse officials of corruption and bribery (archived here), relocating residents to these service homes in Pienaarspoort.

On March 17, 2025, Prasa also wrote on X: “Please note that this is not the case with the video content about the train driver attacked by the damaged train.”

“Systemological Problems”

Many train stations in Pretoria have been severely damaged and damaged over the years, especially during the Covid-19-19 lockdown (archived here).

However, in March 2022, Prasa reopened the corridor, noting that it spent R40.4 million (about $2.2 million) to restore the station (archived here).

South Africa is one of the highest crime rates in the world, with about 75 people killed every day (archived here).

“Although similar large-scale attacks to 2018 have not been widely reported, it remains a systemic problem in the railway environment,” RSR spokesman Madelein Williams told AFP fact check on March 27, 2025.

The regulator’s safety report for the period 2018-2019 recorded 9,268 safety-related incidents, including 30 deaths and 584 injuries (archived here).

The 2018/19 report found that the levels of all security-related incidents that year were “out of control” compared to the previous five years.

Screenshot of security-related event tables, taken from 2018/2019 RSR report

The latest RSR report tracks the 2023-2024 period, indicating that the country’s railways are still plagued by malicious damage and theft (archived here).

During the last reporting period, regulators recorded 7,420 safety-related incidents, resulting in 74 deaths and 98 injuries.

RSR welcomes a new December 2024 law aimed at promoting safe rail operations in the country (archived here and here).

Williams said that while security inspectors conduct regular audits of compliance, greater security, stronger infrastructure and better law enforcement are needed.