It must have been a disorientating week for Leon Schreiber. No sooner had the DA MP been appointed Minister of Home Affairs in the new Government of National Unity than he learnt on X (formerly Twitter) that everything he thought he knew about himself, and his origins, was a racist lie.
Schreiber had long believed that he was born in September 1988 in the then Cape Province, as his birth certificate indicated. On Sunday evening, shortly after his appointment was announced, an anonymous Wikipedia user in the Eastern Cape updated Schreiber’s profile with the explosive revelation that Schreiber had in fact been born in Borrowdale, Harare, Zimbabwe. Not long after that another Wikipedia user updated his nationality to “Zimbabwean]]n”.
However, other users pushed back and, after some edits back and forth, by Monday morning Schreiber’s place of birth was changed back to South Africa. However, the up-and-coming influencer Mehmet Vefa Dag - who is often retweeted in RET circles - then sought to expose the sinister nature of Schreiber’s origins and the cover-up, he believed, that had just occurred.
In a series of widely circulated posts on X on Monday morning Dag - who originally hails from Turkey and is not known to be the world’s greatest friend of the Jewish people – set about revealing Schreiber’s “true” origins through screenshots of the minister’s Wikipedia page.
“Leon Amos”, Dag wrote in an early post, is “unknown man” and a “danger for our home affairs”, now “children Israel will flock into our country.” In a follow up post he asked how a “Zimbabwean foreigner” like Schreiber could be given such a key post in government. Moreover, he pointed out, there was a cover-up underway as Schreiber’s place of birth “was changed 5 hours ago from Zimbabwe to South Africa, this is happening while South Africa is watching.”
In yet another follow-up post Dag asked “how this Zimbabwean became South African overnight. Leon Amos Schreiber the ZIONIST GERMAN. GRAND SON OF ROTHCHILD.”
These reports, and Dag’s screenshots, spread quickly through RET circles on social media.
In a post on X on Monday the MK Party MP Andile Mngxitama – who is not known for his great love for the dogs, cats, or children of white people – asked why there was no xenophobic outrage over this appointment:
“Imagine if the white Rhodesian was a black Zimbabwean as Minister of Home Affairs. Abahambe [the Patriotic Alliance slogan, meaning “they must go”] would be trending. We don’t hate foreigners we hate blacks. See you…”
In a post in response to the escalating uproar over his foreign origins Schreiber pointed out that, in reality, he had been born in the Radie Kotze clinic in Piketberg, a town in the Western Cape, and he had grown up in Kleinzee in Namaqualand.
In a follow up post on Tuesday Mngxitama dismissed the push back he had been receiving for relying upon Wikipedia as his source:
“White lies and hypocrisy. They quickly edited the wiki page when we started asking questions about the Rhodesian Minister of Home Affairs. The white project manipulates everything and edit everything to suit their agenda. From who built the pyramids to editing the Bible. Evil!”
In a post on Wednesday the prominent South African advocate, Dali Mpofu SC, also raised the issue of Schreiber’s alleged Zimbabwean origins and what the lack of reaction to them said about the hypocrisy of others. He pointed out that the ANC government had given Schreiber a job long sought out by a “South African”, Gayton McKenzie, “Mr Abahambe himself!” And yet McKenzie was happy to serve in the same cabinet as Schreiber, without any threat of ‘mass deportation’. “Just imagine (the racism, Afrophobia & self hate)” if Schreiber had been black, Mpofu declared.
ENDS
