Search traffic spikes in South Africa after Nkandla #ConCourt ruling

South Africa’s Constitutional Court — the highest court in the land — has today ruled that President Jacob Zuma and the National Assembly acted against the Constitution, and has thus been ordered to pay back some of the public money spent on his Nkandla homestead.

President Zuma’s Nkandla homestead has been under considerable scrutiny by opposition parties and the public protector after it was revealed that R246-million of the national budget was used for upgrades — some of which Zuma will have to pay back within 45 days of today’s judgement.

Following the ruling, South Africans are taking to search engines and social media to look for more information on the ruling, and to voice their opinion.

Google today saw search traffic for the likes of “Concourt” and “Constitutional Court of South Africa” balloon. But the most impressive spike was for “Nkandla.”

Geographically, the most traffic came from the likes of North West and the Eastern Cape, but surprisingly, KwaZulu-Natal — the province in which Nkandla is based — boasted the least number of searches.

Top cities included the North West’s Mafikeng, and the Eastern Cape’s East London and Grahamstown.

Most searched phrases centred around Jacob Zuma, Nkandla and the Constitutional Court, with a smidgen of related searches also including the Economic Freedom Fighters — one of the ruling party’s opposition parties — present at the ruling.

In terms of social media, #ConCourt, #StateOfTheNation and Thuli Madonsela — the national public protector — are trending on Twitter at the time of writing, with the former garnering over 40 000 tweets today.