Presidency staffer makes a twit of herself

A screen grab showing the @PresidencyZA Tweet.

President Jacob Zuma may love singing and dancing, but he wasn’t the one who set the Twitterverse alight on Sunday with a Tweet lamenting that he was missing out on SA Idols.

The Tweet from @PresidencyZA – the Presidency’s “verified” Twitter handle – was: “OH NO!! I’m missing out on @IdolsSA. I’m far away in another timezone. #sadness.”

Two hours later the Presidency tweeted: “The last Tweet was not an official Tweet from the Presidency or the president but rather an administrative error. Our apologies.”

All became clear when the Idols Tweet was traced to a spokeswoman for Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, who was travelling with him in the US.

But it was the retraction, in which the Tweet was dubbed an “administrative error”, that had the Twitterati in a tizz. Followers of the account zoomed in on the Presidency’s use of the description “administrative error”.

Government spokesman Thabo Masebe said the woman had panicked after realising she had accidentally sent out the Tweet on the official Presidency account – which she is tasked with updating – instead of her personal Twitter account.

While the woman has been forgiven for her “mistake” and will continue updating the Presidency’s Twitter account, the Twitterati have not been so forgiving and assumed it was Zuma himself who had sent out the Tweet.

Ntshadi Mofokeng ?(@Ntsha diMM) responded: “Limpopo students failed mid-year exams. Is it due to administrative error on textbooks? #sadness.”

Zelda la Grange, (@ZeldalaGrangeSA), an assistant to Nelson Mandela who says her Tweets are personal views, weighed in with a retweet mocking the medical parole of Zuma’s former financial adviser, Schabir Shaik. “@Eusebius: Tweet frm Shaik, ‘Excuse my early release frm prison, fellow citizens. It was an administrative error.’ Lmao.”

Later it appeared the Presidency tried to divert attention from the Idols Tweets by congratulating golfer Ernie Els on his victory in the British Open.