Mbalula simply playing politics by calling for return of Scorpions

There is one sure way to tell that there is general election in less than a year: those in power are actually doing practical things to improve the lives of voters.

In Gauteng, premier Panyaza Lesufi seems to be employing a thousand young people a week in one capacity or another, the deputy president of the country, Paul Mashatile, also seems to be in more than one place at the same time because of how busy he is.

But the re-emergence of former minister of transport and now secretary-general of the ruling party Fikile Mbalula is the most intriguing and somewhat full of hypocrisy.

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Mbalula appeared in the midst of the cholera crisis in Hammanskraal to drive the message home that the water issue in the area will not lead to the declaration of a state of disaster. He was at pains to explain that there is no need to do so because what is needed is simply doing the right thing to fix the water situation.

After Democratic Alliance (DA) mayor Cilliers Brink was chased out of the grounds of Jubilee Hospital in the area, it was inevitable that Mbalula, who is already in electioneering mode, would choose to lay the blame for the water crisis fully on the DA and its failure to provide stable leadership in Tshwane.

Mbalula also went on record as saying that the country needs to reconsider bringing back the Scorpions (Directorate of Special Operations) whose disbanding he had spearheaded in the year that former president Jacob Zuma came to power (2009).

Back then, the allegation that was pushed by Mbalula and others was that the highly successful investigative and prosecutorial unit was being utilised to fight political battles. Mbalula and his comrades succeeded in disbanding the most potent unit against corruption. And state capture began in earnest soon thereafter, not hindered by the Scorpions.

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Why is it important to call out the secretary-general of the ruling party in his electioneering “we must do right” campaign?

In the week that political analyst and intellectual Eusebius McKaiser died, it would be a travesty not to speak truth to power, reminding Mbalula and his party that there is nothing new to what they are saying.

McKaiser would most probably have pointed out to Mbalula that the main reason for the government not wanting to declare a state of disaster in Tshwane is because the funds to fix the water problem would be controlled by a DA-led coalition and not the ANC.

However noble the call for the return of the Scorpions might sound, it must be pointed out that his initial call for their disbandment has cost the country so much and it is incalculable how many decades his earlier call had set the country back by.

Chances are that with the Scorpions fully operational, Transnet would still be the giant it once was, so would SAA, Eskom, the SA Post Office, the NPA and many other state institutions that were hollowed out during state capture.

The hypocrisy of Mbalula calling for the return of the Scorpions must be pointed out as simply playing politics.

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Truth must be spoken to power at all times, even when election fever has gripped those in power. It needs to be pointed out that they cannot get to wilfully destroy what belongs to the people and then, a couple of years later, turn around and invite those suffering people to help rebuild what they broke down.

The murder of Babita Deokaran, the people lost to cholera, state capture and many other ills happened because of the absence of the Scorpions enabled them.