MARY ALEXANDER • 22 JULY 2024

Does the British monarch own all the land in England?

John Hlophe, the parliamentary leader of South Africa’s new opposition uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP), made the claim after being sworn in at the national assembly on 25 June. He was arguing for his party’s policy of land expropriation and nationalisation.

“The land in Africa can never be the subject of private ownership. The land belongs to the nation. It doesn’t form part of private ownership,” he told journalists.

He added: “And we are not alone in that regard. Look at the UK. The land in England, the land belongs to the queen. Everybody else has a 99-year lease.”

England is one of the countries of the United Kingdom, also known as Britain. The others are Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

By “the queen”, Hlophe meant the British monarch, currently king Charles III since the death of his mother, queen Elizabeth II, in 2022. The monarch is the UK’s head of state.

The election manifesto of Hlophe’s MKP lists eight “pillars” – things the party hopes to do. Its second pillar is to “expropriate all land without compensation, transferring ownership to the people under the state and traditional leaders”.

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), another South African opposition party, has a similar stance on land.

‘They’re all on 99yr lease. Are they poor?’

The claim that the British monarch owns all the land in England – or in Britain as a whole – has been circulating on social media since before Hlophe’s press conference.

“The Queen of England owns Britain, Canada and Australia and the land in Britain belongs to her,” reads a 24 June post on Facebook.*

An X post reads:

I support the idea of gvmnt becoming a custodian of all land. If you have no use for the land, you must relinquish it to the state to distribute it to those who need to use it.

This is happening in economy jurisdictions that we admire. In England, the land belongs to the queen.

— Mduh (@ThisIsMduh) July 2, 2024

Other versions include:

• “I think the model the EFF is advocating for is similar to one used in England where all the land belongs to the Queen – in our case I guess it would belong to Government.”
• “English law […] states all land in England belongs to the Queen.”
• “In UK the King Charles owns all the land and everyone has 99 year leases and it works very well. No one complains.”
• “No one owns the land in England, it is owned by the King/Queen. They’re all on 99yr lease. Are they poor?”

Is any of this true?

The monarch is not the crown

A 2022 UK house of commons research briefing reads:

Land ownership in England and Wales is based on historical feudal principles. The Crown owns all land in England and Wales; people own estates in land either directly or indirectly from the Crown (for example, a freehold estate or a leasehold estate).

There are two important points here. First, “the crown” is not the same as the monarch. Second, a “freehold estate” is privately owned land.

Another briefing defines the crown:

The Crown encompasses both the monarch and the government. It is vested in the King, but in general its functions are exercised by Ministers of the Crown accountable to the UK Parliament or the three devolved legislatures.

The crown is equivalent to the state in other countries.

And the crown “owns” the land in the sense that it has sovereignty over the land, giving legal weight to private land ownership.

Freehold and leasehold land

In the UK, a freehold estate is land freely and privately owned. It does not belong to the monarch. Freehold land ownership has been a principle of British law for centuries.

“The term freehold property ownership refers to the ownership of both the land and the building on it for an indefinite period of time,” says one UK property expert.

In fact, the HM Land Registry, a government department created in 1862, exists to “register the ownership of land and property in England and Wales”.

King Charles himself privately owns an extensive portfolio of freehold property – but not “all the land”.

Leasehold property, by contrast, is owned only for a fixed period of time. It is leased from the landowner – also called the freeholder. Leases have no specific timeframe. They can be as short as a day or as long as 999 years.

Land is also privately owned in Scotland, where there are concerns about the small number of landowners who hold huge swathes of the country’s rural areas. Northern Ireland also has private land ownership.

The question of land ownership is complex. But the claim that the British monarch owns all the land in England, or the UK as a whole, is false.

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

Edited version published by Africa Check on 13 August 2024

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MARY ALEXANDER • 28 MARCH 2024

Has former US president Donald Trump endorsed uMkhonto weSizwe, South Africa’s newest political party? A low-res video circulating on social media since early March 2024 indicates he has.*

In the clip, Trump appears to say:

Greetings. All South Africans, my name is president Donald Trump. I urge all South Africans to vote for uMkhonto weSizwe May 29th. The African National Congress of Cyril Ramaphosa has failed all South Africans. With this new backed party by president Jacob Zuma, all South Africans will matter. Vote uM …

It then cuts out.

South Africans are set to vote on 29 May in what are slated to be the country’s most pivotal elections in 30 years. Opinion polls suggest the ruling African National Congress (ANC) could lose the parliamentary majority it has held since 1994.

The new uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party takes its name – “spear of the nation” in isiZulu – from the ANC’s military wing during the struggle against apartheid. MK’s profile was boosted when former ANC president Jacob Zuma backed the party and began campaigning on its behalf.

The ANC recently lost a court bid to have the electoral commission’s registration of MK declared invalid. It is currently in another legal battle over who owns the uMkhonto weSizwe name and logo.

One opinion poll suggests that in KwaZulu-Natal, Zuma’s home province, the ANC could lose half its votes to MK in the upcoming elections.

But does the video really show Trump urging South Africans to vote for MK?

Another fake made with Parrot AI

First off, a closer look at the video clearly shows that the audio doesn’t match the movement of Trump’s lips.

Africa Check took screenshots of the video and ran them through a reverse image search. This revealed that the viral clip was taken from a 2017 interview with Trump by the US broadcaster NBC News. The MK party was registered in September 2023.

Trump’s tie, the angle of his face and the flag pin on his jacket are all the same. The background shows the same US presidential flag positioned to his left.

In the 13-minute NBC video, Trump says nothing about uMkhonto weSizwe. The viral video is fake.

It’s likely it was created by Parrot AI, which sells itself as a “celebrity voice generator”.

Africa Check recently debunked another fake, using the same NBC clip, in which Trump appears to berate Nigerians for criticising president Bola Tinubu. That video includes the Parrot AI logo.

* Some claims posted on Facebook and Instagram may have been deleted by users after being rated via Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program.

Published by Africa Check on 11 April 2024

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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.

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