The Minister of Police Fikile Mbalula. (Photo by Gallo Images / Daily Sun / Trevor Kunene)
This week has been drama-filled for our Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula, well, every week is for him. If it’s not Ntsiki Mazwai throwing shade at him for something he said, it’s him throwing shade at someone else or boasting his Twitter following of more than 400K, and thanking his fans for “making him more popular” than the political party United Democratic Movement (UDM). He even got Holomisa commenting, saying he also contributed to his “popularity”.
On Thursday, Mbalula took to social media to lambast a prominent editor for his newspaper’s misspelling of rising cricketer Kagiso Rabada’s surname.
In an array of tweets, the minister accused Netwerk24 editor-in-chief and former Beeld editor Adriaan Basson of being sexist and “throwing racial undertones on black excellence”.
This comes after Beeld misspelt Rabada’s surname in a poster, calling him ‘Radaba’, an incident that sparked an uproar on Twitter, not only from the minister but the public in general.
The poster, which read in Afrikaans “Radaba die drama queen (Radaba the drama queen)”, also triggered a debate on why Beeld would choose a ostensibly ‘negative angle’ on the Proteas’ new young star.
“In one headline @AdriaanBasson successfully managed to be sexist and throw racial undertones on Black Excellence,” tweeted Mbalula.
“Editor @AdriaanBasson and his reporters chose to have that headline when everyone is celebrating Black Excellence, they mock it,” added Mbalula.
Basson later apologised for the headline.
As if this was not enough for the week, Mbalula went on Twitter to inform his followers that his account had been hacked. Mbalula says he was alerted of a post on his timeline, which he quickly deleted and changed his Twitter password.
And the accused are Gareth Cliff, because they are also at each others’ throats, Adrian Basson because of the headline mistake and “Sathana ngokwakhe” (the devil himself).
If it were the devil, unfortunately it does not stand a chance as the minister even took it upon himself to pray in tongues on Twitter. Mbalula said this was not the first time his account was hacked, someone has tried hacking his Facebook and e-mails too.
This is what he tweeted: