When pushed into a corner about the 100 million rand wasted at the recent World Beer and Condom Fest, sorry, World Festival of Youth and Students, Andile Lungisa claimed that the Fest had been instrumental in freeing Tunisia, Egypt and South Sudan. From News24:
Lungisa said that Egyptian youth who had attended the festival in Pretoria in December, had recently been "at the forefront of the Egyptian revolt".
"I'm not saying we started the protests, but before the festival there were no protests in Egypt. After the festival, there were. Draw your own conclusions," Lungisa told the media.
That was of course a classic post hoc ergo propter hoc error. From Skeptic's Dictionary:
"The post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this therefore because of this) fallacy is based upon the mistaken notion that simply because one thing happens after another, the first event was a cause of the second event."Lungisa'a remarkable assertion was implausible, but not totally impossible (very little is). He offered no evidence, however. He could not even indicate how many Tunisians, Egyptians or Sudanese youth, if any, attended. Two thousand Zimbabweans attended, following Lungisa's reasoning, why is Mugabe still in power?
Wow, good catch Leon!
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