[imagesource: GCIS]
Fikile Mbalula is a complete and total imbecile with an insatiable appetite for attention.
This is the guy who nicknamed himself (never a good starting point) ‘Mr. Fearfokkol’ while serving as the Minister of Police, before switching to ‘Mr Fix’ during his current tenure as our transport minister.
Spoiler alert – he was woeful as head of police, and he’s equally as bad at dealing with potholes and our crumbling national train and railway system.
That’s him above showing how wide the gap is between what he’s been tasked with during his time in government and what he’s achieved.
The latest round of drama stems from this tweet, sent on Saturday morning:
Just landed in Ukraine
— FIKILE MBALULA | MR FIX (@MbalulaFikile) March 5, 2022
Hang on – why the hell is he in Ukraine?
Shortly before sending that tweet, he also retweeted this, leading to a rebuke from our German Embassy:
Sorry, but we can’t stay silent on this one, it’s just far too cynical. What
is doing in
is slaughtering innocent children, women and men for its own gain. It’s definitely not “fighting Nazism”. Shame on anyone who’s falling for this. (Sadly, we’re kinda experts on Nazism.)
— Germany in SA (@GermanEmbassySA) March 5, 2022
Just when you think our politicians have maxed out their bottom-feeder capabilities, they manage to go one better.
Mbalula’s tweet about Ukraine, and the subsequent bungling of his response, attracted the attention of VICE:
The thing is: He wasn’t in Ukraine. He had no reason to be in Ukraine. And yet, he tweeted that he was in Ukraine.
Mbalula has served as transport minister in Cyril Ramaphosa’s government since 2019. South Africans are struggling to understand why he would need to fly into an active warzone in Ukraine, or have any connection with Ukraine at all. Journalists have tried asking him, but he has simply refused to explain the tweet.
In fact, when challenged at a recent press conference, Mbalula accused the media of being “disruptive” for wanting to know why he suddenly claimed for no reason to be in Ukraine in the middle of Russia’s invasion.
It’s the impunity with which he operates that is so damn infuriating:
[WATCH] #Newzroom405‘s @ZiyandaNgcobo asks Transport Minister @MbalulaFikile about his tweet regarding #RussiaUkraineConflict. Mbalula says that’s not the reason he’s at the Akasia testing station in Tshwane.
Tune into Newzroom Afrika, DSTV channel 405, for more details. pic.twitter.com/PU6iaxfOlP
— Newzroom Afrika (@Newzroom405) March 7, 2022
In essence, he’s saying how dare you ask me about that insanely stupid thing I tweeted unprompted?
Fikile, you were clearly lying about going to Ukraine and making light of an incredibly serious situation.
Rather than apologising or clarifying why he sent the tweet, the minister doubled down and snapped back at anybody who questioned him:
You were rude and disruptive everyone was shocked by your behaviour journalist alike ,You wanted me to forgo what i went to address in akasia and be diverted by your promotional tour. Am not picking on you if is what u mean by bullying.
— FIKILE MBALULA | MR FIX (@MbalulaFikile) March 8, 2022
Unfortunately there’s nothing to answer.Tell me did i utter any policy statement ? or anything that brought our country’s policy stance in jeopardy. Am the one who should be complaining about bullying by a journalist.
— FIKILE MBALULA | MR FIX (@MbalulaFikile) March 8, 2022
In case you’re keeping score, he still won’t clarify why he saw fit to lie about going to Ukraine.
TimesLIVE went in hard earlier this week:
As many South Africans quickly noted, Mbalula’s performance in his own portfolio is questionable. Prasa is a mess, potholes are commonplace, the annual road death toll is unacceptably high, the AATRO Act (whatever South Africans might think of it) missed yet another deadline, and he has promised repeatedly that we’d have an answer on E-tolls that, to date, we just do not have.
Whether he inherited the problems or not is inconsequential. What matters is that a minister who has failed to resolve them adequately has now weighed in on an international crisis unprovoked — and in an utterly useless manner, to boot…
Mbalula needs to grow up — on Twitter at least — and realise that some things just don’t warrant his (often nonsensical) brand of “razzmatazz”. If he doesn’t, his boss, Ramaphosa, needs to call him to order.
If only Ramaphosa would call him to order.
When there’s a stink in the kitchen, and you find a rotten egg, you don’t move the egg to another cupboard – you throw it away.
However, no matter how poor his ministerial performance, Fikile just keeps on being given new and hugely important portfolios.
He’s not alone. Consider this from The Daily Maverick:
David Mahlobo is still the deputy minister of human settlements despite his actions while he was the minister of state security during the Zuma era, which included playing a role in the jamming of cellphone signals in Parliament in 2015.
Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula was allowed to keep her job as defence minister despite smuggling a young woman into the country from Burundi on a government plane and being curiously unresponsive in the July 2021 KZN and Gauteng rioting. When the time came for her to be removed, she was “punished” with the position of Speaker of the National Assembly.
Nathi Mthethwa has remained minister of sport, arts and culture despite facing severe criticism for his alleged lack of action for people in his sector during the hard lockdown.
The list goes on and on.
Maybe, when we have our next President Ramaphosa 8PM address, he can lift national morale and announce that Fikile’s Twitter password has been changed and he’s not getting it back until he does his job.
Small wins. We would take them where we can get them.
