Mbuyiseni Ndlozi.
Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) spokesperson Mbuyiseni Ndlozi has rubbished Democratic Alliance (DA) federal council chairperson Helen Zille’s suggestion that the EFF may be involved in orchestrating outrage against her.
“She is delusional and should be in an old age home. She has no fresh contribution to make in our politics. Except old age white racism and white supremacy,” he told The Citizen.
This after Zille suggested that a “botnet” of 11,000 fake Twitter accounts allegedly run by the EFF was involved in the outrage that followed her sharing a cartoon by Jeremy ‘Jerm’ Nell.
“A colleague told me that the EFF runs a botnet of around 11,000 fake accounts. If that is true, they would rival Bell Pottinger and it would explain all the orchestrated outrage based on deliberately misinterpreted tweets. Over and out,” she tweeted.
She has since clarified in an interview with The Citizen that she believes there are multiple sources of the alleged “orchestrated campaign” to discredit her, not just the EFF.
“I certainly do believe that there is an orchestrated campaign to comb my timeline and look for anything that can be misconstrued, twisted, taken out of context and used to manufacture outrage. I think this is undoubtedly so.
“I do not necessarily think this is driven by one source, but several. I am an easy target – it is obvious that there are those who want to destroy the DA and our vision of a non-racial, inclusive South Africa.
“They do this by manipulating things to try to paint us as racist. It is a follow-on from the Zuma campaign of painting all opposition as puppets of ‘white monopoly capitalism’. Social media, especially Twitter, has made smearing so much easier. The purpose is to silence and marginalise – as has happened to so many people worldwide through ‘outrage’ and ‘cancel’ culture. But I refused to be cancelled through manipulated outrage, and people hate that,” she said.
The cartoon which caused all the chaos depicts a man in what appears to be EFF regalia – it is unclear whether it is meant to be party leader Julius Malema or just any member of the party – talking to a white person.
“You should give back the land you stole,” says the EFF member.
READ MORE: EXCLUSIVE: I refuse to be cancelled through manipulated outrage – Zille
“You should be jailed for raping my wife!” the white person responds.
“But I didn’t do that,” says the EFF member.
“Exactly,” the white person responds.
“This aptly captures the fallacy and racism behind race generalisations,” wrote Zille by way of a caption.
The cartoon, however, caused outrage.
Multiple users interpreted the cartoon – and Zille’s decision to share it – as implying that “all black people are rapists”.
Zille has strongly denied this, with the apparent intention of the cartoon being to use an analogy to show how accusing all white people of having stolen land is the same as accusing all black people of a crime they did not commit, with rape used as an example.
She has responded to several users who read the cartoon as a generalisation regarding black men and rape by questioning their “comprehension skills” and accusing some users of wilfully misunderstanding her.
The cartoonist, nicknamed Jerm, posted a detailed response to the outrage on his blog, echoing Zille’s assertion that the outrage is “manufactured”.
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