{"id":338985,"date":"2019-09-05T09:36:41","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T07:36:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=338985"},"modified":"2019-09-05T09:44:31","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T07:44:31","slug":"mantashe-promotes-fake-april-fools-mineral-to-investors-at-global-mining-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/338985\/mantashe-promotes-fake-april-fools-mineral-to-investors-at-global-mining-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"Mantashe promotes fake &#8216;April Fools&#8217; mineral to investors at global mining conference"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Resources and energy minister Gwede Mantashe has promoted a mineral called \u201cHazenile\u201d to investors at a mining conference in Australia this week.<\/p>\n<p>The only problem, as pointed out by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.businesslive.co.za\/bd\/national\/2019-09-05-gwede-mantashe-promotes-hoax-mineral-to-investors\/?fbclid=IwAR1Roar5M16vv5hNsHQ-F__fTR82gRkYAm1zBh6preumzB6lPY_LyrNmf3I\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Business Day<\/strong><\/a>, is that \u201cHazenile\u201d is a made-up mineral from an April Fools\u2019 joke.<\/p>\n<p>Hazenile was\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.smart-energy.com\/industry-sectors\/electric-vehicles\/its-april-1\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>written about<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0on the Smart Energy International website on 1 April 2019 \u2013 with large red text clearly stating it was a joke article for the day.<\/p>\n<p>This did not stop the South African government department from putting it in Mantashe\u2019s speech, stating it was excellent news for the battery industry.<\/p>\n<p>The minister told investors at the conference that Hazenile was \u201cdiscovered in abundance in the area between the crypte and throne room caves in the Congo Caves in the Western Cape&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The blatant misspelling of Cango Caves as \u201cCongo\u201d was also copied directly into Mantashe\u2019s speech.<\/p>\n<p>A department spokesperson said it is unfortunate that the focus is now on Mantashe\u2019s mention of Hazenile \u2013 which the spokesperson called \u201cfake news\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Business Day reported that the massive error could further damage South Africa\u2019s reputation.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/335769\/mantashe-talks-up-affordable-nuclear-plans\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Mantashe talks up \u2018affordable\u2019 nuclear plans<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Resources and energy minister Gwede Mantashe has promoted a mineral called \u201cHazenile\u201d to investors at a mining conference in Australia this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":137581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-338985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338985"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":339005,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338985\/revisions\/339005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}