If you checked the news cycle this morning you’ll have seen that South Africa may be in for a rocky few days, thanks largely to Jacob Zuma’s midnight cabinet reshuffle.
If you want to see which key positions were affected, Brendyn Lotz has written up a pretty comprehensive list; we suggest you read it while listening to ‘No Surprises’ by Radiohead.
The big takeaway here is that Pravin Gordhan is no longer Finance Minister, Bathabile Dlamini (she of the CPS scandal) gets to keep her position as Social Development Minister and, at last check, the rand is dropping faster than digested berries from a budgie’s backside.
Take to social media and you’ll see there are a lot of South Africans voicing their disapproval, but according to the latest stats released by Google, Zuma’s reshuffle has yet to crack the search engine’s top ten searches.
Instead, it seems this week, locals were more concerned with their mums, their smartphones and making baked goods.
The top trending questions on Google SA last week were (try not to let your mouth hang open when you get to number 10):
- When is Mother’s Day?
- Where is my phone?
- How to save water
- How to make scones
- How to stop smoking
- How many weeks are there in a year?
- How to create an email
- What does it mean to dream of snakes?
- What is Uber?
- What is apartheid?
That having been said, rumblings about the cabinet reshuffle are steadily on the uptick. While Pravin Gordhan isn’t trending on search this morning, ‘Sfiso Buthelezi’ (the new Deputy Finance Minister’) and ‘Fikile Mbalula’ (the new Minister of Police) are, with 5 000+ searches each at time of writing. Give us time, Google, give us time…
