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Jacob Zuma’s letter to the ANC was one of the hot topics in the last week. (Photo by Gallo Images / Alet Pretorius)
This is a summary of the hottest, most impactful and most active themes and narratives identified in social media conversations in South Africa over the past week.
Two letters set the trend this week, indicating the severity attributed to corruption in the ruling party and the ongoing conflict between advocates of various political leanings within its ranks.
Ramaphosa writes to the ANC
Talks about President Cyril Ramaphosa gained volume following his letter to ANC members expressing his plan to root out corruption in the ruling party. This grew throughout the week until it shot up at 5pm on Saturday, August 29.
When the conversation started @RenaldoGouws tweeted: “You are joking Cyril” in response to Ramaphosa’s letter. The publication questioned the decision to place Zandile Gumede as a member of the KwaZulu-Natal legislature while there were corruption charges against him. Speculation about who would get under the hammer in the plan to root out corruption continued throughout the week, with some commentators saying the rot had spread too far.
Zuma writes to Ramaphosa
What drove the spike in conversation on August 29 was the hashtag #zumalettertoramaphosa, which led to the hashtag #cyrilmustresign. @Advovolicious and @DjNewAfrica, who have been identified as members of the Black Twitter organization in the past, were key in spreading the word about #cyrilmustresign, along with @_AfricanSoil.
Having reflected on both letters, @LukhonaMnguni tweeted that Zuma was admitting that the ANC had failed, according to statements in his letter.
On August 31, President Ramaphosa was trending mentions of #ancnec on Twitter. At this point, the legitimacy of Zuma’s letter was questioned when tweets surfaced about it being a “Orchestrated campaign” and a “Choreographed attack” following comments from Ramaphosa and Gwede Mantashe.
The first Zuma-related peak was at 6 p.m. on August 28, driven by more than 1,200 mentions of #zumalettertoramaphosa.
@_AfricanSoil, whose biography reads: “A well financed; The oiled propaganda machine (mass media) and the capitalists have destroyed the lives of many people through lies and regime changes. A dark period in South Africa ”, tweeted: “FAIR IN: ANC members want Ramaphosa to go along with Pravin Gordhan, who has also destroyed the state companies, Eskom, SAA.” The post was retweeted more than 200 times.
But the ANC members quickly commented: “As members of the African National Congress, we fully support Our President Ramaphosa. What you are saying is that your opinion is not for us. “
@_AfricanSoil later tweeted “[BREAKING NEWS] President Jacob Zuma has written an EXPLOSIVE letter to Cyril Ramaphosa wrt to Corruption; image of the ANC and leadership! “Accompanying the tweet was the alleged letter from Jacob Zuma to President Ramaphosa.
@MosadingN answered: “After reading this letter and as factual as it may be, I question its intention and timing… I hope that logic will prevail over the weekend. Things are terrible under CR, but they will be much worse if you try hard and don’t strike a balance between capital and politics. “
@PlayerThoughts tweeted That the letter was providential, as it was published on the eve of Herman Mashaba’s party launch, proving that it really was time for a change.
Enter Tony Yengeni
The trend line shows very little conversation about Tony Yengeni on Twitter between August 23 and 27. But at 8pm on August 28, there was a noticeable spike, fueled by a tweet aware by @ AfricaNews24_7 which was retweeted about 900 times: “ANC heavyweight Tony Yengeni has asked Cyril Ramaphosa to step down as ANC chairman at a fierce ANC National Labor Committee (NWC) meeting today. This is a story in development. “
On August 29, there was a further spike in the conversation about Yengeni fueled by posts like this one. tweeted by @AdvoBarryRoux: “Tony Yengeni calls Cyril Ramaphosa to step down as ANC president. There is no loyalty among thieves. #TonyYengeni #CyrilRamaphosa ”.
From August 23 to 31, #VoetsekANC was the fourth most used hashtag on Twitter in South Africa. This included more than 40,000 tweets and almost 77 million impressions. The following graph shows the mentions per hour of the hashtag:
From 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. on August 28, the volume of the hashtag #VoetsekANC was 16 times higher than the volume of the previous 10 days. Posts using the hashtags #FokofANC and #RemoveANCfrompower were the main drivers of the increase. Of the 2,240 tweets that contained the hashtag #VoetsekANC, 82% contained the hashtag #FokofANC and 59% contained the hashtag #RemoveANCfrompower.
A cheep Columnist David Bullard also contributed to the increase in posts containing the #VoetsekANC hashtag, receiving nearly 2,000 likes and 700 comments and retweets. He wrote:
“Only two demands
1) recover all the money stolen by the ANC cadres
2) Put criminals in orange jumpsuits now … It’s that simple.
#VoetsekANC “
Comments on the post largely supported the author’s sentiment. One user wrote: “Let’s vote for them” and “Let’s make South Africa great.” Another simply wrote “agree #voetsekANC”.
Raising white monopoly capital
On August 29, Wits University Vice Chancellor @Adhabb shared a cheep accusing “Zuma acolytes” of spitting “jerk [rhetoric] peppered with normal racism about Indians and whites. “This tweet received nearly 700 retweets and over 2,400 likes.
Shortly after, former EFF president @DaliMpofu criticized Habib in this cheep: “As a self-proclaimed intellectual … stripping away your hateful insults and ideological preferences, but applying as much intellectual honesty as you can muster … Do you really BELIEVE that the term White Monopoly Capital was COINED or invented by Bell Pottinger or by” Zuma acolytes “??” This was retweeted 258 times and liked 721 times. DM
The Center for Analytics and Behavioral Change (CABC) is a non-profit organization based at the UCTs Graduate School of Business and incubated by the Allan Gray Center for Values-Based Leadership. It was established to track and counter misinformation and misinformation, fake news, and divisive and polarizing rhetoric that is promulgated online to undermine social cohesion, democratic integrity, and the stability of nation states.
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