South African Twitter believes load shedding is #ClearlyBetterThanZille

helen zille #stormhelen cape town twitter the democratic alliance flickr

It’s been a bad week for Eskom, but even South Africa’s ailing power utility had to take a back seat to the DA’s recent drama.

While said drama began much earlier this month, and involved DA leader Mmusi Maimane and the IRR, on Sunday Helen Zille was voted in as the DA’s new federal council chairperson.

It would be fair to call this the new epicenter of an earthquake that’s still rocking the opposition party, and social media along with it.

The shakes continued on Monday, as Johannesburg’s Mayor Herman Mashaba resigned as the head of the country’s economic hub, and from the DA itself. He cited Zille’s election as a core issue.

It’s barely midday, but this, as well as Helen Zille’s recent political revival, has grabbed all the chatter on Twitter. None of it is positive. #ClearlyBetterThanZille is one example.

South Africans are now using the hashtag to compare Zille to a number of terrible things: from eating brown bread slathered in peanut butter, to load shedding.

Meanwhile, #HermanMashaba is also trending, as Twitter thanks the former Johannesburg mayor for his tenure.

Helen Zille has often been the subject of a hashtag in South Africa, especially since those infamous colonialism tweets made in 2017.

Later that year, Capetonians took to naming a particularly fierce winter storm after her.

Feature image: The Democratic Alliance via Flickr (CC 2.0 BY-SA, resized)

Andy Walker, former editor
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