Why has Mbalula deleted his Instagram account?

The debate earlier this year over who is the real “Minister of Instagram” appears to be over. And Malusi Gigaba, the new finance minister, wins by default.

That’s because new police minister Fikile Mbalula has sadly deleted his account, despite having had about 400 000 followers.

If you try to find the account now, this is the only message you get:

What’s left of Fikile Mbalula’s once-glorious Instagram account.

Maybe it’s just a glitch and the account will be up and running again soon, giving us valuable insight into how a police minister should consider pairing the colour of his belt with his shoes.

Malema last year referred to Gigaba in parliament as the “Minister of Instagram” – Gigaba was the home affairs minister at the time. However, Gigaba had fewer than 100 000 followers back then, and now has 137 000 – still no match for Mbaks. Mbalula also posted to Instagram far more regularly than Gigaba, so the debate about who the “real” Minister of Instagram was seemed to be a foregone conclusion.

Now, though, the prize must go to the only contender who remains, Gigaba. We’ll no longer be able to compare who has the best selfies, dabbing pics and Outfit Of The Day between the two, who are both young ministers (in the context of Zuma’s ageing cabinet) who were once leaders of the ANC Youth League (Mbalula succeeded Gigaba).

Mbalula remains on Twitter, where he is the most popular and most followed member of President Jacob Zuma’s cabinet. He has 727 000 followers. Since becoming police minister, he’s toned down some of the wackiness on this account, which lends credence to the view that Mbalula deleted his Instagram account due to the need to be taken “more seriously” now that he has such a “life and death” portfolio.

As police minister, he certainly hit the ground running. Berning Ntlemeza has been given his marching orders as the head of the Hawks and Mbalula immediately took to Twitter to announce his “wanya tsotsi” initiative, which means “criminals will defecate”. This was linked to his supposed idea of turning social media into a one-stop crime-reporting shop. (By the way, “#WanyaTsotsi” was clearly a catchphrase he’d been waiting for years to dust off and use again after having tried to popularise it during his time as the deputy police minister at the start of Zuma’s first term as president.)

At the start of April, Mbalula invited the public to engage with him on his social media accounts and even report crimes directly to him.

He tweeted: “”Am here for you guys REPORT… crime am here.. Let’s gooooooooooooooo!”

The Institute for Security Studies’ Gareth Newham responded that the minister’s campaign was perhaps a little optimistic in a country where the police receive more than 2 million reported cases of crime every year.

Perhaps that’s why he deleted his Instagram? He couldn’t deal with the deluge of crime reports?

Maybe his Twitter and Facebook accounts will be the next to get the chop?

If so, then we’ll have to go back to the old-fashioned approach of standing in line at the nearest cop shop for our turn to have someone surly in a blue uniform be rude to us.

And social media will certainly be a far more boring place.

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