‘VoetsekMeghan’ trends as South Africans respond to Meghan Markle’s fire story

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By Faizel Patel

2 years ago

South Africans have told the Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle to “VoetsekMeghan” saying she over-dramatised her claims about a ‘fire’ that broke out in her son Archie’s room while they were in South Africa.

Markle was speaking to Serena Williams on Tuesday, on her new podcast “Archetypes”.

The tennis professional was the first guest on Markle’s new podcast.

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The Sunday Times reports that Markle said she had to go to an official engagement in Nyanga, Cape Town, while son Archie was being looked after by his “amazing nanny Lauren”.

She told Williams, Archie, then four months old, was not in the room in Cape Town when a heater started to smoke, but the incident left her ‘shaken’ and ‘in tears’.

“There was this moment where I’m standing on a tree stump and I’m giving this speech to women and girls, and we finish the engagement, we get in the car and they say, ‘There’s been a fire at the residence. There’s been a fire in the baby’s room.’

“We get back. Our amazing nanny, Lauren, who we had [brought] all the way from Canada to here, was in floods of tears. She was supposed to put Archie down for his nap and she just said, ‘You know what? Let me just go get a snack downstairs.’

“Lauren is from Zimbabwe and we loved that she would always tie him on her back with a mud cloth, and her instinct was like, ‘Let me just bring him with me before I put him down.’

“In that amount of time she went downstairs, the heater in the nursery caught on fire,” Markle recalled.

According to the Daily Mail, others are understood to recall the incident which took place on 23 September 2019 – and while they do not remember there actually being a fire, the heater was certainly smoking and was unplugged and dealt with.

However, South Africans have not taken too kindly to Markle’s claims, lambasting her on social media resulting “VoetsekMeghan” to trend on Twitter.

Dutchie shared her sentiments on the social media platform. “Imagine using your own baby son to garner sympathy and to hate on a beautiful country like South Africa. My husband works there, there was no fire just an oil heater letting off some smoke. Archie was nowhere near the room at the time.”

Miss Bee also let Meghan have it. “We sooo poor in South Africa dat we don’t have smoke detectors… then she goes on to say she is our sister! #VoetsekMeghan n may u never set your feet in SA, u r a racist, bully n a bloody selfish ungrateful human being n ooo u r a liar!”

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