TOM EATON | Will the real Tracy Zille please stand up ... and be sworn in

The man accused of fomenting racial hatred and spewing misogynist filth on Twitter under a false identity couldn’t be at the Equality Court on Wednesday because he was being sworn in as a MP.

Yes, dear reader: this is why satirists are giving up. We just can’t compete with reality any more.

Before I continue, however, I must be very clear on one important point: no court in the land has ruled that Anthony Matumba is the man behind the “Tracy Zille” Twitter handle, which presented itself as the account of a racist white woman.

In fact, I know almost nothing about him other than that he is a councillor for the EFF in Makhado in Limpopo, a municipality which, between 2016 and 2017, invested R155m in VBS Mutual Bank, in direct violation of the Municipal Finance Management Act and an explicit instruction from the Treasury not to do so, and which duly lost R60m when the bank was looted and collapsed.

In other words, at this point all we have to go on is the testimony of the SA Human Rights Commission (which took Matumba to the Equality Court) and the evidence provided by disinformation expert Jean le Roux of the Digital Forensic Research Lab on the one hand, and the word of an EFF politician on the other. Until there is an official verdict in the case, we have to presume that Matumba is innocent.

Well, at least innocent of being Tracy Zille.

If he is innocent, then I’m sure you’ll join me in wishing him well as he puts this unpleasantness behind him and starts learning all the important skills of being an EFF MP.

Last year it was reported that Matumba owned a small clickbait empire consisting of over 60 websites, turning clicks into cash through Google’s advertising model. He claims he doesn’t know why “Tracy Zille” kept directing traffic to those sites from “her” Twitter account (and perhaps he doesn’t) but there seems to be fairly solid evidence that he was plagiarising content from other sites to fill his moneymaking scheme with legitimate-looking bumf.

Just when proceedings at the Equality Court were hotting up, however, the whole thing was adjourned, because, as I mentioned so incredulously before, Matumba was being sworn in on Wednesday as a public representative, to serve and protect all citizens of SA and uphold the constitution and the rule of law.

If he is innocent, then I’m sure you’ll join me in wishing him well as he puts this unpleasantness behind him and starts learning all the important skills of being an EFF MP, such as shouting at whomever Angry Daddy Julius tells him to shout at, threatening shop assistants, and flip-flopping three times a week between an all-embracing pan-Africanism and a cynical Trumpist xenophobia.

Of course, the EFF celebrations will be slightly muted: as an organisation that believes in nothing except monetising social unrest, it would have been hoping to sign up “Tracy Zille” as an almost perfect embodiment of the party.

Still, there’s always hope. The Equality Court may still find in the SAHRC’s favour and decide that Matumba is guilty of hate-for-cash activities.

And if that happens, the EFF can welcome him to his spiritual home with such jubilation and popping of champagne corks as haven’t been heard since those golden VBS days ...