Hit on Gauteng housing official raises eyebrows

The brutal murder of government housing official Teboho Makhoa – who died in a hail of 28 bullets – may be more than just another grim South African crime statistic.

Makhoa was involved with colleagues in the Gauteng office of the department of human settlements in moves to “allocate the rightful beneficiaries into their Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) houses, remove illegal occupants from occupied RDP houses and prevent future occurrences of land and house invasions in the region”, according to MEC for Human Settlements Lebogang Maile.

The hit seems to be connected with that work, something born out by Maile’s comment that the murder “will not deter us from our mandate to provide quality housing opportunities to those who deserve it the most”.

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It is deeply worrying that civil servants can be targeted simply for doing their jobs and correctly implementing government policies.

We share the concern of political analyst Daniel Silke that South Africa has to be careful that the country does not enter the realms of a Mexico where bureaucrats become the target of violent crimes, whether they were involved or not.

This sort of violence is the hallmark of a failed state – and it needs to be clamped down on hard. And now.