Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)

ANC sorry about tweet

- RABBIE SERUMULA

WHO COULD resist retweeting a pic of a flaming hot woman draped in a jawdroppin­g swimsuit in the colours of the ruling party?

@ ANCJhb certainly could not and reposted the pic on their Twitter account this week – and now she’s apparently set to sue the ANC for R5 million, according to theedgesea­rch.com.

So who was the woman who crossed social media platforms this week to become the sizzling sensation under the @ANCJhb comment: “What do you make of this new ANC swimwear? # Registrati­onWeek #VoteANC”?

By the end of the day the photo had been removed, but it has emerged that the social media hottie is not an ANC supporter at all. She is Jamaican designer Errice Alicia and she posted her selfie to her more than 32 000 Instagram followers on Monday.

She was strutting the Jamaican colours, not the ANC’s, but her picture was appropriat­ed by Joburg ANC’s Twitter account.

Alicia’s picture went from Instagram to Twitter when one of her Instagram followers, Sydane Thiega, also from Jamaica but who lives in New York, reposted the pic. Two days later an ANC official came across Alicia’s picture and posted it in what seemed like a campaignin­g tweet on the ruling party’s timeline.

ANC spokesman in Joburg, Jolidee Matongo, told a local radio station the party would launch an investigat­ion into who had posted the picture and the person would “face the music”.

The ANC tweet was taken down and the party sent out an apology.

By Thursday Alicia realised her picture had circulated in South African media. She posted a screen grab of an article and captioned it: “a South African news story in which I’m mistaken for a South African party cheerleade­r of the ruling party”. She did not reply to a query from Weekend Argus sister paper the Saturday Star.

 ?? PICTURE: TWITTER ?? INCORRECT: The ‘ANC’ pin-up girl.
PICTURE: TWITTER INCORRECT: The ‘ANC’ pin-up girl.

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