2016 has been one of those years where you start to wonder if everyone should be allowed on social media, given the almost constant stream of horrid postings by seemingly racist individuals.

We know certain peeps are real, like Penny Sparrow and Matthew Theunissen, but perhaps all isn’t always as it seems.

A post last week from someone called Tanya Smit came to be widely shared across Facebook, outrage growing by the minute, before people started to look a little closer at the profile in question.

First here’s the post, which went live during the process of last week’s election results trickling in, and was covered by the likes of IOL:

After many attacked the post Smit came back with more:

“The mission is to take away the right to education for black people because we want you to remain servants to white people ie maids, garden boys We don’t want to give you the power by giving the right to education.”

And then the digging started, with GoodThingsGuys reporting:

The post was being shared thousands of times before speculation weighed in closer to the truth that the account was actually a fake, used to create mayhem.

All the “friends” that were on the account had no idea who she was or how they were connected…

There was only really one person that “Tanya Smit” interacted with since her profile was created in February 2016 – Siphe Mzaidume – whose profile has also disappeared since yesterday…

He is the cricketer that dupped international media into believing that he had been awarded a contract to play overseas… only to find out he hadn’t even played in provisional cricket in South Africa.

Mzaidume went from a cricket scandal in the news… to being the guy that has a habit of creating fake profiles. Loads of them.

The Daily Maverick actually wrote an article about Mzaidume being caught in the act back in 2014:

A number of his teammates claimed that he was busted for creating fake Facebook accounts to talk himself up…

The list of these peculiar Facebook profiles continue to pop up the more you click around. There is, of course, no way to prove whether they are real or fake, but many of them certainly raise an eyebrow. It was a bit odd that somebody who is, if you believe these Facebook accounts, treated as a “celebrity” in England has not been heard of until now.

So what other fake profiles might be connected with Tanya Smit?

“JJ Dippenaar” commented on most of the “Tanya Smit” posts with vulgar, racist provocation but a little digging revealed that his profile had only been created in May 2016 and all three profiles shared the same friends.

As a last blow, the company listed on “Tanya Smit” – Budget Car Rental – have released a statement as they have no idea who she is & no record of her working for them.

In case you were wondering, all of these accounts (Smit, Mzaidume and Dippenaar) have been deleted these past few days.

Are there racists on Facebook, still bitter about the end of comments sections and still desperate to spew their hateful rhetoric – yes.

Should we consider the fact that there are people trying to actively spread nonsense and inflame tensions – yes.

Misinformation thrives off our desire to click share before we think (HERE), so exercise a little caution out there in Facebook land guys.

[sources:goodthingsguys&dailymaverick]