BBC Trending: 'Zuma Must Still Fall': South Africa reacts to economic troubles

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionJacob Zuma has been criticised for his handling of South Africa's economic troubles

Faced with an economic crisis that has led Jacob Zuma to sack two finance ministers in less than a week, South Africans are responding online with heavy criticism of the president.

#ZumaMustFall began trending last week after Nhalnhla Nene lost his job. Since then, more than 150,000 tweets have used the hashtag. One of the earliest tweets came from @EllaPieters, an attorney from Cape Town.

The hashtag reached its peak when the latest finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, was drafted in.

The leader of the Democratic Alliance, the main opposition party, tweeted a plea to Gordhan which was shared more than 600 times:

Image copyrightTwitter

Gordhan's appointment calmed the markets somewhat - he was widely respected when he served as South Africa's finance minister from 2009 until 2014. But some critics continued their online attacks - the hashtag #ZumaMustStillFall has been used more than 20,000 times. The Democratic Alliance used it to issue a motion of no confidence in the president:

Image copyrightTwitter

Gordhan's predecessor, David van Rooyen, lasted only four days in the job - and many South Africans joked about his short stint with the tag "Van Rooyen Didn't Even":

Image copyrightTwitter

So what did Zuma say to van Rooyen in this photo? Cape Town journalist@lesterkk's caption was retweeted nearly 2,000 times, joking that the finance minister's role was only going to be a brief one:

Image copyrightTwitter

Blog by Andree Massia