Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula accused leftwing editor of Beeld newspaper, Adriaan Basson, of being racist in a Twitter spat.
Mbalula accused Basson of being racist because he assumed that the minister had engaged in corrupt activity just because he is black.
The spat started when Basson asked Mbalula who had paid for his trip to the Floyd Mayweather vs Manny Pacquiao fight in Las Vegas.
“Adrian, please note that in the new democratic dispensation a Black man can afford to go to America without using your tax,” Mbalula responded hotly.
He also tweeted that Basson’s “cheap journalism resulted in asking cheap ignorant questions”. It “bordered on “stereotypical assumption [that] all blacks are corrupt,” he added.
Basson defended his questions saying he was only doing his job as a journalist, but blacks on Twitter sided with the minister.
The spat is all the more entertaining as Basson has exhibited a particular fondness for stereotypes himself. He regulary accuses Afrikaners and whites of being “rightwing”, “racist” and “Nazi”.