This photo shows Tanzania’s leader at a memorial service, not a gathering with co-wives

This article is more than one year old.
Published on April 14, 2021 at 15:01
2 min read
By Mary KULUNDU, AFP Kenya

Facebook posts claiming to show Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan with her co-wives during a meeting convened by their husband have been shared multiple times in Kenya. The claim is false: the picture features Hassan during the memorial of Zanzibar’s first president Abeid Amani Karume, and the women seated next to her are not her co-wives. AFP Fact Check was able to identify two of the three women as senior government representatives of Zanzibar.

A Facebook post published on a Kenyan Facebook page with more than 500,000 followers shared an image of Hassan and three other women seated on the floor wearing hijabs and kangas – a piece of printed fabric women tie around the waist in the Swahili culture.

“Tanzania President together with her co-wives at a family meeting chaired by their husband. I like this.....kenyans women I greet you all (sic),” reads the Facebook post shared more than 50 times.

A screenshot of false Facebook post, taken on April 13, 2021

Similar posts were shared on Facebook (here, here and here) and Twitter (here and here).

The same claim was published as an article on the Zambian Observer, a website that has frequently published misinformation. (See AFP’s previous debunks here, here and here.)

However, the image does not show the Tanzanian leader and her alleged co-wives. The photo was in fact captured during the memorial service of Zanzibar’s first president Abeid Amani Karume on April 7, 2021. The day was designated a national holiday known as Karume Day to commemorate the late leader who was assassinated in Tanzania on April 7, 1972.

The memorial was attended by regional leaders and streamed live on this YouTube channel.

Hassan and the three women seated next to her can be seen in multiple frames during the livestream.

Screenshots of livestream showing Hassan at the memorial service of Zanzibar’s first president

The official Facebook page belonging to Zanzibar’s presidential office also posted images of Hassan attending the memorial service.

Who are the women?

An AFP stringer in Tanzania identified two of the women in the image being circulated in the misleading post. "The woman in a yellow hijab seated on Hassan’s right-hand side is Mariam Mwinyi, the wife of Zanzibar President Ali Hassan Mwinyi, while the bespectacled woman on the far-left of the image is Zanzibar Chief Secretary Zena Ahmed”, the stringer told AFP Fact Check.

A search on Google for Mwinyi and Ahmed’s images corroborated this.

This Facebook post from a local newspaper publisher also identified the two women seated next to Hassan.

AFP Fact Check is seeking readers' help in identifying the woman on Hassan's immediate left. If you know who she is, please let us know by writing to factcheckeditorsAfrica@afp.com.

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