ANC Youth League wants ‘photographer’ of fake photo arrested

The ANC Youth League wants the person who took former President Nelson Mandela’s lying-in-state photo to be arrested and prosecuted.

“We are amazed that there are some people who chose to abuse the token of friendship that the Mandela family has extended to the rest of us as the public to have a chance to see our beloved Madiba for the last time,” the League said in a statement released today.

The statement was received by Fourways Review at 10.44am, hours after various media houses started to question the photo’s authenticity.

It has come to light earlier this morning the photo is fake, merely an old picture of South Africa’s vibrant president taken when he’s eyes were closed. The league’s statement came hours after the announcement.

“As the ANC Youth League, we call on those that are circulating this picture to stop and those that have it to delete it. The act of circulating this photograph is disgusting and distasteful – it is un-African and disrespectful to Comrade President Mandela, his family and the South African public,” the statement concluded.

Yet, there was nothing said about smiling South Africans taking pictures and showing various hand signs at sites honouring Madiba.

Sometimes the sombre mood was overshadowed by flocks of people taking selfies, pulling the popular ‘duckface’.

At a Memorial Service honouring the president on Tuesday, national and international media were treated to hundreds of ‘mourners’ hamming it up for cameras.

One of the bizarre situations was of a man rubbing a sucker on the lips of a poster of Mandela, then proceeding to kiss and suck on the image.

Today is the last day the first president of South Africa as a democratic country will be lay in state.