Malema, the BBC and AWB: The perfect video-share storm

From India to London, Seattle and New York, South Africa was making headlines for all the wrong reasons on Thursday thanks to the studio scuffle involving AWB secretary general André Visagie and press conference outburst by ANC Youth League president Julius Malema during a press conference.

Regardless of the serious racial tensions that the incidents highlight, both also made for extremely good video-sharing across the net, and as Zoopy CEO Jason Elk points out, the two videos were “almost too good to be true” in terms of viral-sharing suitability.

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past 24 hours, AWB secretary general André Visagie caused quite a ruckus during the eNews programme Africa 360 on Wednesday when he stood up and verbally threatened the other guest on the show, political commentator Lebogang Pheko, and presenter Chris Maroleng.

A couple of hours later at Luthuli House in downtown Johannesburg, ANCYL president Julius Malema called BBC journalist Jonah Fisher a “bastard” and a “bloody agent”, before ordering the journalist to leave the building during a press conference.

By 9pm on Thursday night, the Visagie video had been viewed on YouTube 48 597 times, while the Malema video had been seen 21 556 times.

A particular “humorous” phrase from the Visagie video, “don’t touch me on my studio”, quickly became a hashtag on Twitter and was trending on Twitter on Thursday afternoon. The You Tube remixes, some of which are shown below, quickly followed.

While the original videos are funny only because they are so sad, a few spoof videos are doing the rounds and are gaining in popularity.

Here are the originals and some spoofs:

AWB secretary general André Visagie storms out of TV studio

Spoof: “Make the circle bigger” parody

Spoof: MC Hammer audio clip

Don’t Touch me on my Studio video Hammer Remix – RefreshCreativeMedia

“Don’t touch me on my studio…” – JoblogDon

“Don’t touch me on my studio…” – VisibleInkDesign

Malema throws out BBC journalist

One can’t help but picture Evita Bezuidenhout interviewing Malema and Visagie on live television, and wondering what that video would look like…