Photo shows alleged victim of SA police violence, not a thug paid to disrupt Kenyan opposition rally

On October 19, 2021, a Facebook post featuring a shirtless man with a welted back identified him as “General Kipngetich” and claimed he was arrested by the public. The post, which has been shared more than 150 times, claimed that he had homemade tear gas and a gun in his possession.

Image

A screenshot of the false Facebook post, taken on November 1, 2021

Similar posts were shared on Twitter here and here.

The post claims that the pictured man was contracted by the United Democratic Alliance (UDA), a political party affiliated with the country's deputy president, to hire a rowdy gang to taunt the former prime minister and opposition leader Odinga during his rally in Embu, central Kenya.

Arch-rivals Ruto and Odinga are both eyeing the presidential seat in the upcoming general election slated for August 2022, and their reception by the public during political rallies has been used as a measure of their popularity.

Picture from South Africa

While there were reports of heckling during Odinga’s rally in Embu, the man pictured in the post was not contracted by UDA to hire a rowdy crowd.

In fact, a reverse image search shows that the image shows a South African man who alleged that he was assaulted in October by police in the city of Tshwane, South Africa. The incident was reported in local media here and here.

In the reports, the shirtless man is identified as “Shiba” and not “General Kipngetich” as the false Facebook post named him.

The same picture was tweeted by South Africa’s Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID), the body in charge of investigating police misconduct, to report the arrest of 11 Tshwane metro police officers who were allegedly involved in the assault of three men.

According to reports, the incident, which is under investigation, occurred on October 2, 2021, at a Tshwane impound vehicle centre where the man in the picture and two others had gone to collect their vehicle.