Sports and Recreation Minister Fikile Mbalula on Friday said his Twitter account was hacked, after inexplicable pictures of a half-naked woman appeared on his timeline late on Thursday night.

The pictures show a woman named Mandisa dressed in lingerie posing provocatively for the camera.

The post has since been deleted, but not before Twitter reacted in true rapid-fire fashion, of which some of the responses can be seen below.

The sports minister first responded to the furore around midnight, tweeting: “NB MY TWITTER ACCOUNT WAS HACKED THEY WILL NEVER SUCCED”.

On Friday morning, he tweeted again: “Goodmorning Twitter: Yesterday, I wasn't online but I was alerted of a post on my Time-line. Logged on line and quickly deleted it”.

He also posed a mock vote asking users who they thought hacked his account, with the three options being Gareth Cliff, former Beeld editor Adriaan Basson and Sathana Ngokwakhe.

As a result, "Mbaks" is currently trending on Twitter.

Department spokesperson Esethu Hasane declined to comment, telling News24 the matter was a personal one, and not a departmental issue.

Twitter reacts to Mbalula's hack claim:

News24