Juliet Buna
Around late December 2023, a video made the rounds on social media with the claim that it was a recording of the Chairman of the election commission chair of the Democratic Republic of Congo being humiliated after announcing fake and rigged results.
An X user, @SabinaNkiru shared the viral video with the caption, “DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) Election Commission Chair humiliated after announcing fake and rigged results. If INEC and Co was afraid of something even a little bit like this, our fortunes today will be much better.”
The post has garnered over 733,000 views and 2000 reposts. This video has also been repeatedly shared on WhatsApp and X with slightly varying captions.
On some of the WhatsApp groups the video was shared, it was tagged “Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) ELECTION COMMISION CHAIR HUMILIATED AFTER ANNOUNCING FAKE AND RIGGED RESULTS: Until we have this action in dubious countries in Africa, we wouldn’t have peace – because they are protected with police and several security forces. The time is coming …”
VERIFICATION
An online search by N-VA to see if any verifiable news platform published news relating to the assault, search results revealed that TV5Monde, a French public television network on its website published a story titled, “Violence against women in the DRC: “It is again the woman’s body that has been used for political purposes”,” with a screenshot from the viral video showing the woman being undressed.
N-VA searched further and found out that an online media platform @Kivunews24 posted the video on December 22 with the inscription written in French, “RDC:Cette femme a été agressée parce qu’elle a voté pour Katumbi. When the inscription was translated to English, it read: “DRC: This woman was attacked because she voted for Katumbi.”
This is contrary to the initial post that the woman in the video is the election commission chair in the viral claim on the same video shared on WhatsApp and on other X handles.
A further search by N-VA showed that the current President of the Électorale Nationale Indépendante (CENI) is Dénis Kadima Kazadi. A male not female as portrayed in the video. Also, the title for the head of CENI is president, not chairman as reported in the viral video.
To uncover the identity of the woman and location of the video, the researcher took more screenshots from the viral video and one of them turned up in Google reverse image search results with the link to a news article published by Radio de la Femme on December 26, 2023 on violence against women in the DRC. It was revealed in the article that the incident happened in Kananga, capital of Kasaï-Central in DR Congo and that the woman was being forcibly undressed and beaten for voting a different candidate who is not from her geographical area in the just concluded presidential election.
CONCLUSION
The viral claim in the video that the president of the election commission chair of the DR Congo was beaten and humiliated after announcing fake and rigged results is FALSE. The original video stated that the woman was attacked for voting a different candidate in the recently concluded presidential election.
