[imagesource: Masi Losi]

Fikile Mbalula is a national embarrasment.

Scratch that – he’s an international embarrassment.

Shuffled from one ministerial position to the next, his latest switch was from Minister of Police (dubbing himself ‘Mr Fear Fokol’) to Minister of Transport (dubbing himself ‘Mr Fix’).

I’m not the first person to point out that the aptest nickname would be a combination of both – Mr Fix Fokol.

We don’t get the best man or woman for the job in this country. Instead, our ministers are appointed because they’re loyalists, in this case to President Cyril Ramaphosa, as the internal ANC wars rage on.

Mbalula’s most recent spat with The Daily Maverick started with an article by Stephen Grotes. Mbalula penned a response headlined ‘Stephen Grootes’s spurious attack disguised as objective criticism is gutter journalism’.

It was kind of The Daily Maverick to extend the right of reply to the minister, but the kindness ended there. Branko Brkic, the publication’s Editor-in-Chief, responded with an article of his own headlined ‘Dear Minister Mbalula, trust is earned – and you have failed that test too many times’.

The gloves came off, starting with that ridiculous tweet about touching down in Ukraine. You know, this one:

Just landed in Ukraine 🇺🇦

— FIKILE MBALULA | MR FIX (@MbalulaFikile) March 5, 2022

He hasn’t deleted it, and now claims it was “clearly satire and a metaphor”.

Um, for what? Here’s Branko:

If it were true that your Ukraine tweet was “clearly satire and a metaphor”, then why did you not say so at the time? When the tweet was published no one in government or the ANC saw it as satire. ANC spokesperson Pule Mabe clearly did not get the joke; he told News24: “I think he’s been hacked.”

…But even more damning, in fact, is your own response to questions about your Ukraine tweet.

When Newzroom Afrika’s Ziyanda Ngcobo asked you about the tweet, you said:

“No, I’m not going to talk about that… no, I didn’t trivialise anything and I’m not going to comment.”

All those chances to say it was satire or a metaphor, and not a word uttered about either.

Mr Fix would have you believe he’s hard at work solving a range of issues related to public transport, but the proof is in the pudding and pudding is hard to come by:

In 2019 you told commuters on Cape Town’s Central Line: “I’m here to fix things.” A year later you made a similar promise.

You even changed your Twitter name to “Mr Fix”.

Is the experience of commuters “fixed”? Your latest promise is for this line to be sorted out by June. That’s tomorrow, if you were thinking 2022. Will it be fixed by then?

That’s today. I know this is going to shock you but the line has not been sorted out.

Branko also took aim at the disgusting treatment of so-called suspects in 2017, when Mbalula was Minister of Police, who were tied up and paraded around on social media while being linked to a crime spree.

They were actually en route to a funeral and were later released without being charged.

The full rebuttal really is packed with body blows but I’ll finish with this:

It is not the news media that stops you from delivering on your many broken promises. Even you cannot close your eyes fully to the fact that we’re but one step away from breaking down – as a society, as people, as a country, as a state – and we are ruled by a party that is breaking down from within.

It is the people of South Africa who are hurting after decades of you and your colleagues’ incompetence and the insular nature of the ANC leadership’s existence. The people you and your party colleagues manage to so thoroughly forget about.

Incorrect. They haven’t forgotten, they just don’t care. Once they have eaten, there’s nothing left.

To really stick the boot in, journalist Bryan Rostron also took to The Daily Maverick to land a few blows.

His article is headlined ‘Fikile Mbalula appears to be increasingly untethered from reality’:

Mbalula may present himself as a legend in his own Twitterverse, but ominously for South Africa the Honourable Minister appears to imagine that tweets represent the real world. In this self-referential cosmos, words replace action and insults substitute for argument. The more bellicose the verbiage, the more puffed up becomes the braggart.

It continues thus.

I’ll save you the hassle and swing past Mbalula’s Twitter account. Remarkably, he has yet to fire back.

Don’t worry, though, he’s fixing things:

Good morning followers and those I follow me we fixing the country amist the challenges.Working together we can do more.

— FIKILE MBALULA | MR FIX (@MbalulaFikile) May 27, 2022

[sources:dailymaverick&dailymaverick]