Dirco slammed for false white population claim and typo
· Citizen
This festive season the communications team at the department of international relations and cooperation should hope to find a dictionary and geography lessons under their tree.
Yesterday, the department’s official X account carried a post suggesting South Africa has the largest white population in the southern hemisphere and hashtagged it #unty(indiversity) instead of, one could only assume, #unity.
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Dirco’s X post claimed SA has largest white population in southern hemisphere
And while the brave social media team at Dirco must have attended a quick lesson in geography, Tannie Spellcheck did not wave her magic wand. An amended post appeared later, but #unty remained, flagging down beady eyes on social media.
For an organisation that manages South Africa’s foreign policy and diplomatic reputation, posting misspelt hashtags and getting facts blatantly wrong does not embed a level of confidence in the country’s communication ability.
Reputation management practitioner Dionne Collett of Take Note Reputation Management said mistakes happen, but official government communication should be held to a considerably higher standard.
“The main core of reputation management is always to stick to what are the facts and what is the truth in your communications to your stakeholders,” she said.
A map would have helped them stick to, or learn, the facts.
Brazil alone demolishes Dirco’s claim. Its 2022 census recorded 88.2 million people who self-identified as white.
Brazil alone demolishes Dirco claim
South Africa’s white population is about 4.5 million, according to Statistics SA’s 2025 estimates. Brazil therefore has almost 20 times South Africa’s white population.
Chile has just more than double the Caucasian count and Argentina is close to 40 million. Down Under, in Australia, they don’t count by race but it’s estimated that around 20-27 million white people live there.
Collett said it did not take extensive research to discover these facts.
“On a quick Google search, those were the countries that came up immediately to me, stating that they have a higher concentration of white people than South Africa,” she said.
The errors also raise the question of how an official communication from a department responsible for South Africa’s international relations made it through an approval process in the first place.
Collett said social media should be subjected to the same scrutiny as other organisational communication.
Official govt communication should be held to higher standard
“It should be checked at least twice before it actually goes onto social media,” she said.
“Once it’s up on social media, it’s done. It’s there.”
She said every communication should get a “fresh eye approach” before publication to make sure there are no mistakes and, more importantly, that “the truth is being told”.
Deleting and correcting the original did not quite do the trick either. The amended version fixed the substantive wording, but #UntyInDiversity survived.
Collett said the blunder was not necessarily catastrophic for Dirco’s reputation, but the greater danger was what repeated errors could do to trust in its communication.
“I don’t think it causes damage to their reputation, but more to the trust value of the communication being put out there,” she said.