In the original video, President Ruto was addressing the 2024 anti-Finance Bill protests.
This TikTok post featuring a video claiming to show President William Ruto saying he will retaliate against South Africans is FALSE.
The video is captioned, “South Africans must leave Kenya – Pres Ruto not happy. President Ruto vows to retaliate towards South Africans.”
In the video, President Ruto says, “It is not in order or even conceivable that criminals pretending to be peaceful protesters can reign terror against the people. The criminals who reigned terror on innocent people are still determined to continue with their dangerous behaviour. I assure the nation of the government’s determination to fulfil its constitutional duty of protecting the people of Kenya against all forms of harm. We must isolate crime from democratic expression and separate criminals from people exercising the freedom of expression and divergent opinion.”
However, is it true that those remarks were directed towards South Africans? PesaCheck investigated.
A Google reverse search shows that President Ruto made the remarks on 25 June 2024 during a state of the nation address after the deadly anti-Finance Bill protests.
In the video, President Ruto did not mention South Africa; instead, he put the planners, financiers, orchestrators and abetters of violence and anarchy on notice.
President Ruto added that the government had mobilised all the resources at their disposal to ensure such a situation does not recur.
When asked whether President Ruto made the remarks about South Africans stated in the claim video, State House public communications director Wanjohi Githae told PesaCheck, “No. That’s fake.”
Additionally, there is no credible evidence that President Ruto has vowed to retaliate against South Africans.
Instead, he has pursued a policy of strengthening diplomatic and economic ties with South Africa, previously arguing during a state visit that incidents of violence were a continental issue requiring African Union reforms rather than grounds to blame South Africa directly.
Moreover, President Ruto has never said South Africans must leave Kenya. On the contrary, he has championed free movement across the continent, advocating visa-free entry for all Africans into Kenya to boost trade and economic integration.
The video under investigation circulated amid civil unrest and anti-immigrant sentiment in South Africa, which led to the voluntary evacuation of hundreds of people back to their countries.
PesaCheck has looked into a TikTok post featuring a video claiming to show President William Ruto saying he will retaliate against South Africans and found it to be FALSE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Naomi Wanjiku and edited by PesaCheck senior copy editor Mary Mutisya.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck chief copy editor, Stephen Ndegwa.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape the government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water/sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
This fact-check is republished by The Besana Mail – Zim Truth Radar with the permission of Code of Africa under a partnership agreement.
