A coldwar of hashtags brewing in South African politics

 Sibusiso Banda

Hashtag that!! That’s the new trend that has hit the South African political sphere. In light of the breaking stories this past week, the country’s top three political parties resorted to sharing their views with their followers on social media particularly on Twitter by creating a Game of Thrones via  spearheaded by hashtags message.

Just to bring you up to speed: Hashtags, words or phrases preceded by the # symbol, have been popularized on Twitter as a way for users to organize and search messages. For instance, people tweeting about the ruling party might add the hashtag #ANC to their message, and those searching for the lastests developments in parliament could simply search #ParlyChaos.

The virtual coldwar started last Thursday during a parliamentary seating when Julius Malema asked President Jacob Zuma when he would pay back the money as recommended by the Public Protector Thuli Madonsela in her Nkandla report. Zuma dodged the question and set off a game of Russian roulette, with the Economic Freedom Fighter disrupting parliament and bring it to a "lockdown" with their chant “Pay back the money!”

The social media space went crazy: The result was the Hashtags #PayBackTheMoney and #WeWantTheMoney leading to front page headlines in almost in all the newspaper in the country the following day. They also dominated the Radio, television shows and online discussion forums.

The African National Congress came out and condemned EFF’s behavior and its disruption of parliament proceedings. It did not end there. A public spat ensued between the ANC and Madonsela over a “leaked letter’ to the media. The protector said a senior ANC member is responsible for the leak.

ANC responded by telling her to “take responsibility” and then put her to task by coming up with the hashtag #GiveUsTheNames referring to those she suspected to be responsible for the leak. Twitter and Facebook went crazy over this resulting in a three day trend on both social media.

The Democratic Alliance added their missile to the coldwar when The Supreme Court of Appeal dismissed Zuma's application to prevent the release of the so-called "spy tapes". The SCA ruled that within five days, the National Prosecuting Authority must comply with the previous court order and to release the tapes to the DA. #GiveUsTheTapes emerged as their ammunition of choice.

To how far the war will go and who join remains to be seen yet. But in the meantime, they have been able to keep social media users intrigued on what’s going to happen next in the political scene.