You think our potholes are bad? South African mayoral candidate poses with stuffed giraffe to show sheer size of crater

Published: 01:32, 17 August 2026 | Updated: 01:40, 17 August 2026 A South African political party placed a stuffed giraffe's head in a huge crater to highlight the country's pothole problem - only for the move to backfire dramatically when rescue teams were called.  The Democratic Alliance (DA) posted video footage of the long-necked animal poking its head out of the sinkhole near Johannesburg over the weekend, hoping for an outcry against the state of the country's roads.  It was fronted by the party's shadow member for roads and logistics Evert Du Plessis, and captioned: 'A sinkhole so deep a giraffe can stand in it.' The video did indeed cause quite a stir on social media but, as far as the politicians were concerned, it did so for all the wrong reasons.  Within hours staff at the local Owl Rescue Centre had received a number of concerned calls about the safety of the giraffe.  Rescuers dropped work to rush to the scene in Mogale City, in the Gauteng Province, only to find out that the video was in fact a hoax.  Workers from the centre fumed in a social media post: 'Naturally, we rushed straight out to help. Right up until we received this photo and realised it might be a prank.  'Turns out, it was. The local branch of the DA thought sticking a stuffed giraffe head into a hole was a clever way to draw attention.' Evert Du Plessis of South Africa's Democratic Alliance party is pictured sitting on the edge of a huge sinkhole with a stuff giraffe's head poking out of it  Staff later suggested that the DA should make a donation to cover fuel costs after they abandoned another mission to tend to the stuffed giraffe. 'When an animal's life might be on the line, we don't wait around, we respond,' they wrote. 'What if it had been real?  'Using an actual dead animal to score political points isn't just unethical but deeply disrespectful to our wildlife and biodiversity.  'We get it. We understand why you need to bring attention to the state of our roads and sinkholes. 'And we even get the joke. But using an animal to make a political point just crosses the line for us.'  In his clip, Mr Du Plessis of the DA had said initially: 'Here is the sinkhole that we started visiting in February last year. As you can see, nothing has been done.  'We had some fun with the giraffe here. A lot of people that drove past thought he fell into the hole, but it’s just a prop that we use to emphasise the veracity of this problem.' The DA finished second in the country's last election in 2024, when the African National Congress lost its 30-year outright majority.