It was pitiful and embarrassing. A politician in the doldrums, clearly out of his depth and clueless about how to run the crime-fighting machinery under his control.
Like many of his colleagues, Police Minister Bheki Cele craved adulation and love from the community when he went to Gugulethu.
Instead, he was met with derision and scorn from a community beset by crime and complaints of police incompetence, a South African problem.
That’s when he resorted to bluster and fury. Instead of dealing with the matters raised – inexperienced detectives dealing with dockets overload – the minister resorted to an emotional tantrum.
This column observed before that ‘cowboy’ Cele, a teacher by profession, has no place fighting crime.
He likes to take the media to a crime scene and make promises to stricken communities instead of solving the crime.
So when Action Society director Ian Cameron challenged Cele and expressed a lack of confidence in him, the minister let rip and went off on a tangent.
“My mother was a kitchen girl, and my father was a garden boy,” said the minister, quoting a ditty favoured by the SACP.
No one could lecture him about human rights because he had served time as a political prisoner on Robben Island.
Then he lost it completely. “Sharrruuup! Sharrruuup! Geeettttooout!”
Embarrassing stuff from a senior politician. It brought back memories of a younger Julius Malema calling a journalist a bloody agent and a bastard at Luthuli House.
However, Cele is not alone in losing his marbles when confronted by glaring government failures. Former human settlements minister Lindiwe Sisulu once lost her cool when an activist called her out on a promised development that was not delivered.
Cele’s meltdown is only the culmination of the New Dawn administration’s failure. Many people deem Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration disastrous with unemployment, load-shedding, collapsing municipalities and soaring gender-based violence rates.
I’m afraid more ministers will be on the receiving end of societal discontent as people regain their voice and speak truth to power.
Cele was already feeling the heat when the police failed to quell last July’s riots, and many were calling for his head. Instead of knuckling down to beef up police capacity, he behaves like he’s on the New York Undercover television series.
I have a piece of advice for the minister: If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Your tirade was not honourable!
Follow @SundayWorldZA on Twitter and @sundayworldza on Instagram, or like our Facebook Page, Sunday World, by clicking here for the latest breaking news in South Africa. To Subscribe to Sunday World, click here
