A new South African App called Zumalator has seen a massive increase in downloads after Jeremy Clarkson mocked Zuma during his show.
The app is a sudo-calculator which parodies President Jacob Zuma’s inability to pronounce certain big numbers.
Last year, Zuma sparked laughter globally when a video of him revealed how he struggled to read out membership figures of the ANC.
In the clip, Zuma is heard saying: “Our membership figures stood at seven hundred and sixty nine thousand, eight hundred and …seven hundred, listen properly, seven hundred and sixty nine thousand, eight hundred and twenty…huh.. and seventy members down from one hundred and, one hundred and point two million in 2012.”
Released in December last year the app is available free of charge on the Google Play and iOS stores.
The Zumalator app uses Zuma’s voice in solutions to calculations. It uses famous quotes around Number One’s number phrasing as well as a “Nkandla” button.
Phrases such as “my laughing’s not hurtful, it’s healthy” and “I think it’s between seventy-eight-hundred” are included in the app.
The App has seen a huge spike in downloads after the last episode of ‘The Grand Tour’, a show produced by controversial petrol heads Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond.
The trio kicked off their Amazon series in South Africa with an early episode that features jokes on the South African president. Zuma was not depicted as a figure worthy of respect, but as someone who can’t manage basic counting.
The app developer, Cape Town based Justin Nothling, told Fin24 that he was stunned to see how downloads of the app have picked up, especially after it was released on December 30 2015 shortly after Zuma’s sacking of Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene..
Prior to the surge in downloads, Nothling said that the app had prior to last week received over 19 000 downloads on Google Play and over 15 000 on iTunes. But from Friday last week, the downloads have risen to over 30 000 on Google Play.
“The app is basically a calculator that not only calculates the wrong answer to any sum, but also reads the wrong answer back to you in the Jacob Zuma voice (with pronunciation mistakes and all). It gets me laughs wherever I go,” Nothling explained
The app comes with a disclaimer explaining that it is for entertainment purposes only and should not, under any circumstance, be used “to calculate personal finances or a country’s budget.”
The app for Android can be found here, while it can be found on the iTunes store here.
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Sources: Zumulator | Fin24