A fake Twitter account in the name of SABC chief operations officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng has caught the attention of a number of people in the local Twittersphere with it’s humorous tweets, but the national broadcaster is not impressed at all.

The account, with the handle @SABC_COO, has Motsoeneng’s photo on its profile and 660 followers so far. It’s not known who the creator behind the account is, but it does seem that this person follows news and information on the SABC and it’s COO quite closely.

Here are some of the tweets that have been posted.

The SABC has condemned the account and the views expressed in it’s tweets saying is just not a violation of Motsoeneng’s rights and identity theft but it affects the SABC as the organization that he represents.

“The individual deceiving the nation and the world pretending to be the Acting COO is communicating messages that are in conflict with the SABC’s standpoint on several issues which is in turn causing a problem for the organization and misrepresenting Motsoeneng,” the national broadcaster has said.  “It must be noted that Motsoeneng does not have a Twitter account and any account with his name and photograph is deemed fake and must be disregarded”.

The matter is so serious that Motsoeneng and the SABC have vowed to take the legal route and make an application to have the account removed and prohibit anyone from opening another fake account in future. Of course, anyone at SABC stopped to read Twitter’s T&Cs, they’d could save a fortune in legal fees. The microblog has very clear rules for parody accounts, of which there are many highly successful ones in operation.

In the meantime though, the fake impersonator has no plans to shut the account down or stop tweeting.

[Source – SABC News]