‘Jacob Zuma’ more popular than ‘April Fools Day’ on Google

President Jacob Zuma tonight took to the Luthuli House podium to comment on the Constitutional Court’s ruling regarding upgrades made to his Nkandla homestead.

He declared his innocence, and claimed that he did not deliberately act against the Constitution. He also stated that he acknowledges and respects the Constitutional Court’s ruling, which will require him to pay for some of these non-security upgrades. Ultimately however, it seems that general sentiment of the country — at least on social media — was that the President would resign tonight. That definitely didn’t happen.

Instead, there’s another takeaway, at least for the data lovers out there. According to Google’s search traffic at least, South Africans were more interested in President Zuma, and the country’s currency, than April Fools Day.

The graph below depicts the search trends on Google for the past day in South Africa, and surprisingly the term “Jacob Zuma” largely outweighs “April Fools.”

The rand, South Africa’s currency, also saw a surge of queries, largely thanks to its recent rejuvenation after the Constitutional Court’s ruling.

Worldwide, pranks definitely outranked politics, but in terms of South Africa’s continental neighbours, searching for President Zuma was also a common activity for those in Swaziland, Botswana and other southern Africa nations, as depicted below.

At the time of the ANC’s press conference — held after President Zuma’s address and headed by ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe — #Zuma was trending in Kenya ahead of its own parliamentary discussions, while it ranks third worldwide with over 47 000 tweets.

Feature image: South African Tourism via Flickr