This Facebook post claiming to show the unveiling of a statue of Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta in Limpopo province, South Africa, is FALSE.

“Statue of Uhuru Kenyatta unveiled in Limpopo,” the Facebook post reads.

The post is accompanied by a photo of four unidentified people standing next to a statue.

PesaCheck performed a reverse image search to check if, indeed, that statue is of President Kenyatta. It turns out the image was shared by The Citizen, a South African publication in 2019, and shows a statue of Cyril Ramaphosa, the country’s president.

Limpopo’s Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Sports, Arts and Culture, Thandi Moraka, said the sculpture was created in 2018 by an upcoming artist from Tshisahulu in the Vhembe district. The sculpture was created in honour of the South African president, and it is being kept at the Matsila Royal Kraal.

“The statue was not a government initiative but that of our emerging artist who really needs to be supported for him to realise his dream of being an artist,” Moraka said back in 2019.

Additionally, there are no credible news reports regarding the unveiling of a sculpture of President Kenyatta in South Africa’s Limpopo Province. Similarly, State House Kenya has not announced the statue on its social media pages or website. The false claim has also been debunked by Africa Check, AFP and Kenyans.co.ke.

PesaCheck has looked into a Facebook post claiming to show a statue of Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta in Limpopo, South Africa, and finds 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 Chief Copy Editor Rose Lukalo. The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck Managing Editor Enock Nyariki.

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 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.

PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.