Malema files ‘missing person’ alert for Mabuza

None other than EFF commander-in-chief Julius Malema joined the unofficial roasting squad today, tweeting a ‘MISSING PERSONS’ alert for the man known colloquially as ‘DD’.

Popular Twitter parody account @AdvBarryRoux had earlier tweeted a cleverly photoshopped, imaginary conversation on the Hawks WhatsApp group about Deputy President David ‘DD’ Mabuza’s whereabouts.

Julius Malema’s tweet, however, seems to have taken questions regarding Mabuza to the next level. At the time of this story being published, the tweet had received more than 800 retweets in just an hour.

The fact that the picture accompanying the tweet lists the colour of Mabuza’s eyes as red was, we felt, a nice touch.

Speculation that Mabuza has gone missing are not entirely unfounded. Mabuza was sent to Russia last week to smooth things over with Vladimir Putin, who was reported to be angry with Cyril Ramaphosa at news that he had picked China’s President Xi Jinping for a state visit over him.

Jinping had asked to visit South Africa during the Brics summit in July, which Ramaphosa accepted. The only problem was that Jacob Zuma, while still president, had reportedly already agreed to a visit from Putin at the same time.

Mabuza’s trip reportedly had the dual purpose of giving him the task of apologising for the bungle while also breaking the “bad news” to Putin that South Africa wouldn’t be going ahead with a nuclear deal involving Russia’s nuclear agency, Rosatom, because of affordability concerns.

The deputy president was meant to return from Russia on Monday, but so far, whether he has indeed returned or not is unconfirmed.

Not letting the public know that you’ve returned after being sent to give one of the world’s most powerful and, arguably scariest, people some bad news is more than enough reason to cause South Africans to worry that he may, indeed, have gone missing.

We hope that he is not currently “sleeping with the fishes” and that he checks in with South Africa soon to let us know that he’s OK.