While the ugly wounds of South African race politics have been picked open this week, there are still some determined to make the country’s president Jacob Zuma pay for his mid-December axing of finance minister Nhlanhla Nene — an action which sent the Rand into freefall.
Memeburn has received an email from someone claiming to be “one of the people behind the #ZumaMustFall campaigns” urging South African companies with a social media presence to donate 30 minutes to an hour of their time every day to what it says will be “THE biggest Social Media campaign this country has ever seen”.
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Come the 11 February 2016 (we think the state of the nation address is around this time),” it says, “all South Africans will come to a standstill and demand that Zuma steps down”.
Read more: #ZumaMustFall: South Africans voice concern, frustration after Nene axing
“While the #ZumaMustFall movement is resolute in that we have no political affiliation nor racial definition,” the statement reads, “it must be made clear that we are actively campaigning for the recall of Jacob Zuma from the office of the President of the Republic of South Africa”.
“In light of the spreading social unrest, economic decline, political instability and growing questions surrounding the constitutionality of certain decisionmaking within the Presidency,” it adds, “the #ZumaMustFall members believe Jacob Zuma to be the wrong candidate to lead our country further.Therefore, we are giving the current electorate the opportunity to recall Jacob Zuma, and place an individual of integrity and moral fibre at the helm in order to restore political calm, social cohesion and inclusive economic prosperity for all South Africans”.
The movement claims to follow the same guidelines established within the Constitution and represent “the voters and patriotic citizens from all political parties across the Republic of South Africa and those living and/or working abroad”.
Read more: Jacob Zuma as Darth Vader makes so much sense
According to James van den Hoven of Vane Digital, more than 700 social media companies in South Africa have been invited to join and give just 30 minutes to an hour of their time every day to help pull off this campaign.
Given that the movement’s December marches were far from universally popular, it would be surprising if the movement manages to achieve anything like what it’s aiming too. It’s also worth noting that it’ll have an uphill battle to bring South Africans’ attention back to this particular issue given the way the year’s started.
Image: GovernmentZA via Flickr.
