The Commander-in-Chief of South Africa's Black Twitter is Actually a Zambian Blogger

The notoriously controversial parody account of Barry Roux is that of a male Zambian blogger.

Ask any South African about the go-to Twitter account for all the files on South African news and controversies, and they'll probably point you towards the parody account of Barry Roux. And if that name sounds familiar, it's because Barry Roux is the criminal lawyer who defended Paralympian 'blade runner' Oscar Pistorius in the massive trial, where Pistorius was charged for the murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentines Day, back in 2013.

According to News24, the parody account known as Man's Not Barry Roux and has over 500 000 followers, is not run by a South African at all but in fact a Zambian blogger named Csho "Shepard" Chilala.

And so what, you may be asking? So what if we now know the identity of some guy running a parody account?

Well, the parody account has in the past released sensitive and quite confidential information about the South African political game which led many South Africans to speculate that the identity of the person in charge of the account was that of a disgruntled member of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) or a member of the Crime Intelligence Unit.

It turns out, that it's just an ordinary guy, a blogger who hails from Zambia and not even South Africa.

What makes this so important is how his Sunday exposés were in fact just him allegedly releasing false information about crime syndicates, racist journalists and corrupt officials and hence potentially making him one of the most dangerous vehicles for fake news in the country.

An extensive investigation by the News24team uncovered how Chilala had slipped up multiple times and left an online trail on various other social media platforms which all made it all the more easier for the keen eye of a journalist to uncover his identity.

Here's how South Africans are responding to the news.











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