Old video of ex-Kenyan leader falsely shared as rebuke to his successor's electric motorbike pledge

“Former President Uhuru Kenyatta responds to William Ruto Madaraka goodies to watu ya bodaboda (sic),” reads a tweet published on June 3, 2023 which has since been shared more than 100 times.

“Watu ya bodaboda” is Swahili for motorbike taxi riders, while “Madaraka” refers to Madaraka Day -- an annual public holiday marked on June 1 to commemorate independence.

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Screenshot showing the false video, taken on June 21, 2023

Boda boda taxis are a critical mode of transportation in Kenya, employing more than 1.4 million people (archived here).

The 64-second video is a compilation of two clips: one featuring Kenyatta and the other Ruto.

In the first clip, Kenyatta speaks about a politician whom he calls a pathological liar but doesn’t name.

“A political leader stands before you Kenyans, I don’t want to mention names… He lies to you in broad daylight…that is conmanship…” says Kenyatta in Swahili.

In the second clip, Ruto speaks about government plans to introduce electric motorbikes to the Kenyan market.

Similar claims were shared on TikTok here and here.

Political fallout

A March 2018 peace pact (archived here) between Kenyatta and Raila Odinga – his long-time political foe – marked the beginning of the fallout between Kenyatta and his then-deputy Ruto.

In an unexpected shift in political alliances, Kenyatta decided not to support his deputy of nine years when Ruto ran for president, instead backing his former rival Odinga (archived here).

Nevertheless, Ruto won the fiercely contested presidential election in August 2022 by a small margin (archived here).

While campaigning, Ruto’s party Kenya Kwanza made several promises (archived here) to Kenyans including lowering the cost of living, but after nine months in office, most of these pledges remain unfulfilled and prices of basic items in the country continue to skyrocket.

But the video shared online does not show Kenyatta rebuking Ruto about his latest promise to introduce affordable electric motorbikes.

Old footage

The video contains a watermark reading “Strange News Kenya”.

A keyword search for “Strange News Kenya” led to a Facebook account by the same name.

The page published a 10-minute video featuring Kenyatta, alone, addressing Kenyans in Swahili on July 26, 2022.

This speech, which is nearly a year old, includes the clip used in the video now being shared on social media.

In the original footage, then-president Kenyatta spoke about allegations by certain politicians at the time who accused him of moving port services away from the coastal Kenyan city of Mombasa to the Naivasha dry port.

Kenyatta argued that the Naivasha Inland Container Depot (ICD), which he inaugurated on July 26, 2022, was not developed to diminish Mombasa port but rather to reduce congestion there as well as at Nairobi’s ICD and on the roads, thus easing the movement of cargo (archived here).

Using the keyword search “Uhuru at Naivasha dry port”, AFP Fact Check found that the same original footage was also published on YouTube by local media outlets Nation (archived here) and Citizen Digital (archived here).

Meanwhile, the clip in which Ruto speaks was lifted from footage (archived here) showing his Madaraka Day speech when he announced plans to introduce affordable electric motorbikes.