Zille mauled on Twitter over ‘caged woman on bakkie’ tweets

Western Cape Premier and former DA leader Helen Zille found herself in yet another social media storm after having involved herself in the early speculation around a photo of a woman on a bakkie in a sheep pen.

The photo went viral on Thursday and Zille only added to the confusion around the matter when she tweeted: “Re the person caged in a bakkie. Owner has been traced. Emerging facts appear very serious. Police onto it.”

Re the person caged in a bakkie. Owner has been traced. Emerging facts appear very serious. Police onto it.

— Helen Zille (@helenzille) January 19, 2017

This turned out to be wholly inaccurate, as no crime was committed, though the circumstances around the matter have divided opinion hugely. The woman, Linda Steenkamp, an unemployed and reportedly pregnant local from the Cradock area, asked a farmer, Johan Erasmus, for a 60km lift into town.

It later emerged during an interview performed by a woman from Eblockwatch that Steenkamp had asked to be seated at the back of the bakkie because “we are used to sitting at the back” and she apparently wanted to be in the wind due to the extreme heat that day. According to Erasmus, he’d barely spoken to Steenkamp during the whole affair.

The farmer, who claims to have received death threats in the wake of the drama, says he has been utterly perplexed by it.

Zille, in turn, has now faced criticism from both extremes of white and black people in South Africa.

She complained that she had been subjected to a “lynch mob” and that her Twitter timeline was the place where “SA’s most recalcitrant racists meet – both black and white”.

Yesterday's #lynchmob revealed my TimeLine as the place where SA's most recalcitrant racists meet — both black and white.

— Helen Zille (@helenzille) January 20, 2017

She also expressed outrage at a tweet from one Botsang Moiloa telling her that she needed to get it into her “Caucasian head that whites are racist”.

I wonder whether this 100% racist tweet will generate any outrage on Twitter today? #justasking https://t.co/tZfdisGw5W

— Helen Zille (@helenzille) January 20, 2017

She told her followers that Twitter’s “horror” should not be confused with the real South Africa, since it is an “echo chamber”.

This is a crucial point: Twitter is an echo chamber. Never confuse the horror of Twitter with the reality of SA. https://t.co/EItNAYQuVb

— Helen Zille (@helenzille) January 20, 2017

It’s unclear if she also acknowledged that she had perhaps contributed to some of the misinformation around the affair when initially saying the “emerging facts appear serious”, despite her first tweet about the picture actually being the most accurate, in which she had said people should wait to discover the facts.

For that tweet, she was attacked by, among other people, Eusebius McKaiser, who criticised her for wanting “racism receipts”.

Ydy's bakkie outrage proved Kasparov's point: Misinformation is a numbers game. There is only one truth but the number of lies is infinite.

— Helen Zille (@helenzille) January 20, 2017

Zille wrote that lies can be infinite but there “is only one truth” – another debatable point in its own right.