Mantashe must be held accountable

What a wonderful world it would be where someone could install R300 000 worth of security equipment at your house without your knowledge. That’s the universe occupied by Gwede Mantashe, the minister of mineral resources. Instead of merely avoiding comment totally when involved in allegations of dodgy dealings, Mantashe elected to play the ignorance card. He even showed journalists the installations, hoping that this would, in some way, prove his innocence.

Mr minister, you’re going to have to do a lot better than that to explain how the improvements to your properties – carried out by Bosasa, that well-known ministerial income booster – took you totally by surprise.

While the project was being overseen by your then head of security, Mzonke Nyakaza, Mr Mantashe, and when the invoices were apparently not coming directly to you, did it not occur to you to ask who was footing the bill? Had you done so, you might have been told it was Papa Leshabane, a director at Bosasa who has been identified at the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture as the Bosasa bagman, who paid off politicians, civil servants and even journalists.

Had you asked questions at the time, instead of accepting that the donation had simply fallen from the heavens, you might also have called for the installation to be removed. That would have been the correct thing to do, Mr minister.

Doing the correct thing is not something which features strongly in the ANC’s political playbook. So many fingers have been pointed at so many people in the organisation that, surely, not all of them can be as pure as the driven snow?

Minister Mantashe must be held fully accountable. Come to that, why is he still in his job?