There is a hoax email doing the rounds about "flesh eating bananas" which have supposedly already "decimated' monkeys in Costa Rica.
One that reached the Cape Times apparently was sent from someone at the office of Premier Ebrahim Rasool.
Another was sent out in the name of a Durban company, Sovereign Health, which has had queries about the mythical bananas from as far as Dubai.
"It's all a load of rubbish," said the switchboard operator at Sovereign Health. "Unfortunately they got hold of our letterheads and sent out this nonsense and we've had calls from all over the place."
The email claims that several shipments of bananas from Costa Rica have been infected with "flesh-eating bacteria" which had managed to "graft" themselves to fruit skins. These bacteria, the email said, would eat into "two to three centimetres of flesh per hour".
It claims that the United States authorities knew about the bananas, but did not want to issue a warning in case it caused mass panic.
"If it were true, we would have had dead people piling up all over the country," the switchboard operator said. - Daily News Correspondent