A billboard of many faces

People have turned to social media platforms to produce 'Zuma Must Fall' memes, sparking a trend in South Africa.

Cape Town - In less than a week the face of the Overbeek building was covered with banners calling for Zuma to fall and for Zuma to drop the price of avocados.

While some banners were photoshopped, the billboard placed on the building last week calling for Zuma to fall has caused controversy.

Last week, a billboard with the words “Zuma Must Fall” appeared almost overnight on the building and on Tuesday a South African flag was put up after ANC supporters ripped the initial sign off on Saturday.

A “concerned private initiative” claimed responsibility for putting up the Zuma Must Fall poster. The city has now given the building’s body corporate three business days to remove the flag; failure to do so will see the city sending a case docket to prosecutors.

City spokeswoman Priya Reddy said the signage structure was in contravention of the Outdoor Advertising by-law. “Any party involved in unauthorised display will be held liable. This could be the body corporate and/or the signage company.” She added that regardless of the graphic, the signage structure is in contravention of the by-law.

Social Media tracking agency Roi Africa said the poster was responsible for more than 70 percent of the conversation over social media in the country last week.

Roi Africa’s managing director Tonya Khoury said a number of memes came up. “There were a lot of memes and people making changes to the poster. We (South Africans) tend to switch to comedy so quickly, we tend to laugh at ourselves quickly and it is not a bad thing.”

“Zuma must drop the price of avocados” and “Zuma must buy everyone Nando’s” were some changes. Others photoshopped the “Zuma Must Fall” poster to buildings across the world, leading others to believe the movement went global.

Meanwhile, the ANC in the province called for a proper investigation “into the erection of the ‘Zuma Must Fall’ billboard and other banners in Cape Town”.

The party’s Western Cape leader Marius Fransman said they want to get to the bottom of “this riddle”.

“It is now necessary to have a proper probe to find out precisely how this media company gets its business and who deals with it. The faceless people who are behind this campaign must come to the fore and it must be established how this company obtains its contracts and how it came to lease these spaces or got the rights to use it, since this company was also embroiled in actions about the legality of various billboards or spots.”

yolisa.tswanya@inl.co.za

Cape Argus