It’s being used to claim that the new party is South Africa’s “biggest”, but the clip actually shows Fuerza del Pueblo supporters in the Dominican Republic.

MARY ALEXANDER • 14 FEBRUARY 2024

A video of a huge crowd in green and black marching down a long avenue is doing the rounds online with the claim they are supporters of a new contender in South African politics, the uMkhonto weSizwe Party.*

The party takes its name from the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC) during the struggle against apartheid. MK for short, uMkhonto weSizwe means “spear of the nation” in isiZulu.

The struggle ended with South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, won by the ANC. It’s since been re-elected every five years. But with the country set to vote again in 2024, opinion polls suggest it may lose its majority for the first time.

On 24 January, the video was posted on TikTok with the words “ANC is out. Viva MK party.”

A week or so later it appeared on X/Twitter with the caption “MK IS THE BIGGEST POLITICAL PARTY IN SA CURRENTLY!!!” The post has been viewed more than 91,600 times so far.

It was also uploaded, with the same caption, on YouTube, where it’s had more than 28,000 views. The YouTube video has in turn been posted across Facebook – here, here, here, here and here.

The MK Party was registered with South Africa’s elections commission in September 2023. Debate about who actually owned the name “uMkhonto weSizwe” soon followed.

The confusion continued into December when Jacob Zuma, president of the ANC government from 2009 to 2018, endorsed the MK Party and began to campaign on its behalf. He was quickly expelled from the ANC.

Debate has extended to the party’s logo, which uses a slightly modified version of the original MK emblem of a warrior holding a shield and brandishing a spear, in black, set against a green background.

But does the clip really show MK Party supporters?

Fuerza del Pueblo march on Workers’ Day

The video’s watermark shows it comes from the TikTok account @rolandomarte81, where it was posted on 11 November 2023.

Other videos on the account suggest it’s based in the Dominican Republic, a Spanish-speaking Caribbean country east of Central America on the island of Hispaniola, which it shares with Haiti.

A Google Lens reverse image search of the first frame of the video led us to another TikTok account from the Dominican Republic. It also brought up a post on X with a longer version of the clip.

Here it’s described as being shot on 1 May 2023 in San Ignacio de Sabaneta, a city in the northwest of the Dominican Republic.

La lucha por la rebaja en los precios de los alimentos y combustibles; más que ideología política, es justicia social. ¡Únete a la lucha por una sociedad más justa e igualitaria! @LeonelFernandez@FPComunica#MarchaTrabajadoresFP#MarchaFP #FuerzadelPueblo pic.twitter.com/v4aXnO8V6D

— Magdalena Valerio (@Magdale34645821) May 1, 2023

The post’s mentions include Leonel Fernández, a former president of the Dominican Republic, and his opposition Fuerza del Pueblo (“power of the people”) political party.

It also includes the hashtag #MarchaTrabajadoresFP, which leads to numerous X posts about a 2023 Fuerza del Pueblo march held on 1 May – recognised as May Day, Labour Day and International Workers’ Day – in the Dominican Republic. In Spanish, “marcha” means “march” and “trabajadores” means “workers”.

Many of the posts under the #MarchaTrabajadoresFP hashtag include other videos that clearly show the same scene in the viral clip.

It was shot in the Dominican Republic, not South Africa. The people in green and black are supporters of Fuerza del Pueblo, not the uMkhonto weSizwe Party.

Published by Africa Check on 16 February 2024

* Some Facebook and Instagram users may have deleted their posts after Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program rated their claims as untrue.