Cheap shot from grandstanding and childish Mbalula

Fikile Mbalula, former minister, former ANC head of elections, currently roaming loose cannon, is not known for using logic in his statements. The self-styled Mr Twitter has now, however, strayed further into illogicality, crossing the line of tastelessness in the process.

Commenting about the deaths of three Johannesburg firefighters in the blaze at the Bank of Lisbon building which houses, among others, the Gauteng department of health, “Mbaks” claimed the firefighters were “ ill-equipped and ill-trained when they went inside that building”.

Then, in a piece of cynical political grandstanding which was tawdry by even his dismal standards, Mbalula added that the men perished because the mayor of Johannesburg, the DA’s Herman Mashaba, was not doing his job.

Mbalula blithely ignored 22 years of ANC misrule in Gauteng and Johannesburg, as well as the fact that comrades of the dead firefighter, and employees from the building, agreed that it was a death trap and that the responsible people – Mbalula’s own ANC government – had ignored the warnings and pleas to improve safety. The building scored just 21% in a safety assessment. Colleagues of those who died said that a lack of water inside the building – and not lack of training – had killed the men.

In other words, Mbaks, you are blaming the wrong person. And, in doing so, you are cynically trampling over the feelings of the families and colleagues of the fallen heroes.

It is ironic that your ANC colleagues in Tshwane are now threatening to go to court against DA mayor Solly Msimanga, who this week closed the government’s Poynton Building in the city because it is also a death trap. He was cheered by workers in the building – employees of your ANC government, Mbalula.

You are playing cheap, and childish, politics. But coming from you, it doesn’t surprise us.

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