This snappy comeback from Buti Manamela will make your Friday

A witty Twitter comeback from Deputy Minister of Higher Education and Training Buti Manamela to a Twitter hater has earned him a lot of fans.

A user called Lazarus Mothogwane thought he was giving the deputy minister a bit of stick by taunting him just after midnight on Friday morning. Seriously? Who tweets cabinet members at the witching hour?

There Mothogwane was, in the dead of night, with a pressing question on his mind. He wanted to know why President Cyril Ramaphosa had spared Manamela on Monday in his first cabinet reshuffle after taking office as the new Number One citizen.

However, Mothogwane’s grammar left a lot to be desired: “How did Cyril left u behind when he was reshuffling.”

Manamela (who had hopefully been asleep at the time Mothogwane’s assault on both him and the English language was perpetrated) responded a few hours later: “So that I help you with your past, present and future tenses.”

This distinct lack of chill has generated a lot of hilarious reaction, with even political analyst and author Richard Calland remarking that it was “seriously well played”: