Old photo from SA falsely shared as showing Kenyan opposition supporters vandalising road

“Why haven’t Kenyan security agencies arrested this man damaging a public road in Siaya County? Are the security agents in Luo Nyanza working for conman @RailaOdinga?” reads a tweet published on March 16, 2023.

Luo Nyanza is a region in Western Kenya that is home to the Luo tribe.

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Screenshot showing the false tweet, taken on March 17, 2023

The picture shows a person digging up a section of tarred road while onlookers sit on a guardrail.

The same claim was shared on Twitter here and here. This tweet contained the same image but praised “Good Samaritans” for repairing the damaged road.

Opposition demands

Odinga lost the presidential election in August 2022 to William Ruto. Since then, tensions have been rising between the camps.

In February, Odinga gave Ruto a two-week ultimatum (archived here) to open the 2022 election servers and tackle Kenya’s exorbitant living costs. His other demand included the halting of the ongoing process of appointing new electoral commissioners.

On March 20, 2023, the opposition leader spearheaded a demonstration in the capital Nairobi. Police fired tear gas (archived here) to disperse supporters and politicians who had responded to Odinga’s call to action (archived here).

But the photo does not show a road being vandalised in Siaya county.

Photo from South Africa

AFP Fact Check has previously debunked the claims that the image shows a road elsewhere in Kenya and Africa here and here.

In reality, it shows (archived here) residents of Msinga municipality in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa destroying a section of the R33 road between the towns of Pomeroy and Dundee to protest years of service delivery grievances with the local authorities.

The image was also published in September 2020 by South Africa’s local media (archived here and here).

KwaZulu-Natal’s provincial transport department published the images on its Facebook account on September 23, 2020 (archived here) and condemned the “destruction of infrastructure and malicious damage to property after members of the community blocked the R33 and dug up the road in protest”.

The department’s spokeswoman Gugu Sisilana confirmed the authenticity of the image to AFP Fact Check in October 2020.

“Yes, it is the R33 at Pomeroy,” Sisilana said.

AFP Fact Check was able to confirm the exact road location with Google Maps Street View.

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Screenshot showing the section of the R33 road that was dug up in KwaZulu-Natal province