Media outlets across the country took a brief sojourn from bad news, engaging in some humorous attempts to dupe their readers and listeners on April Fools’ Day.
The Witness newspaper in Pietermaritzburg spun a yarn that the city council was proposing a split to the traditional two-day weekend “to create a more focused workforce”.
The piece was written by author “Olof Paril”.
The Times had a fresh take on current events, reporting that President Jacob Zuma was pursuing a Bachelor of Commerce degree in an effort to one-up Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema, who this week graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
The Mercury newspaper teamed up with Durban’s East Coast Radio to pull the wool over some ears and eyes, insisting that the station was looking at a plan to charge listeners for their service.
“East Coast Radio, like other subsidiaries of Kagiso Media, is exploring new revenue streams as a result of the digitisation of media,” the paper reported.
Another radio station reported that trade & industry minister Rob Davies had been replaced by one of the Gupta brothers.
In a similar vein, the Rand Daily Mail website reported that former Springbok coach Pieter de Villiers had lifted the lid on another scandal, claiming the Gupta brothers had offered to make him coach again.
Online kitchen supply store Yuppiechef.com listed a note that they were offering a delivery service of purchased goods by remote control chopper.
The Daily Maverick carries an image saying: “April Fools’ 2016 cancelled until further notice. We couldn’t come up with anything half as mad as SA reality today. Sorry.”
TechCentral ran a piece saying that Zuma had decided to split the department of telecommunications & postal services into two new departments, ICT & fibre-optic affairs and spectrum management & postal services. It said that Sahara Computers founder Atul Gupta had been appointed interim minister of spectrum management.