About

Ramaphosa's Face Mask refers to a viral video of South African president Cyril Ramaphosa struggling to put on a protective mask during an April 2020 press conference addressing the coronavirus outbreak. The clip of the president circulated a Twitter that month along with captioned screenshots and #maskchallenge in which people post photos of themselves wearing the mask like Ramaphosa.

Origin

On April 23rd, 2020, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed his plans for slowly lifting restrictions on May 1st. That day, Twitter user @leloe_m shared a clip of Ramaphose attempting to put on his face mask (shown below). The video gained over 15,900 views and 290 likes in a day.

Spread

On April 23rd, 2020, Twitter user @_BlackZA^[3] posted a screenshot of Ramaphosa captioned, "South Africa's: what about alcohol Ramaphosa: #CyrilRamaBillion" (shown below, left). The tweet gained over 1,100 likes and 250 retweets in a day. That same day, TikToker @Am_Blujay^[4] tweeted the screenshot next to a Bird Box screenshot with the caption, "President trying to warn us about Level 7 of Corona #ramaphosa" (shown below, right). The tweet garnered over 1,300 likes and 320 retweets in a day.

Twitter user @NeoSepz posted another clip of press conference with the caption “'baby quickly put on the condom'" (shown below). The tweet accumulated over 6,300 views and 170 likes in a day. TimesLive^[1] and EWN^[2] published articles about the viral video.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References