Who is in charge?

WHO is in charge of South Africa? Is the country, as one analyst said, on “auto pilot” since the Jacob Zuma presidency? Let us take two recent incidents.

In Vuwani, Limpopo, 27 schools were burnt. How could crime intelligence miss glaring signs that something amiss was about to happen? Where were the police when the torching of the schools started? How could they allow so many to be destroyed?

Response: They sent the ministers to talk to the residents to try and sort out the (political) problem days after the fires. Two months down the line schooling has come to a standstill. Is there a plan afoot to stop the holding to ransom of the whole community by political shenanigans? It doesn’t look like it.

This is what happens when the cabinet takes it upon itself to protect the presidency from scandals instead of upholding their oath of serving the republic.

Accountability is a foreign word within the government.

Was anyone held responsible? The answer is no. What we get are barely logical excuses and plans to make sure that incidents like these will never happen again. Their favourite ploy is endless community engagements while the taxpayers will bear the brunt of the reconstruction.

Last week’s taxi shutdown of Eastern Cape surely takes the cake and shows the haplessness of our leaders. “We will not shy away from going back to striking, as this issue of permits is negatively affecting the industry” said Santaco provincial head Noluntu Mahashe.

The arrogance in this statement is breathtaking. These are the people who blocked access roads and burnt people’s cars.

Why do they feel they can do so with impunity?

It is because our country doesn’t know the word “accountability”. What action has been taken against transport MEC Weziwe Tikana who has been accused of causing this mayhem because of the delays in issuing the permits for the taxi operators? Nothing. Premier Phumulo Masualle now has to face a crisis which could and should have been avoided if the person he deployed as MEC did her job.

Why is it possible that a solution mechanism could be found in hours when the MEC had 24 months to sort it? Who is now going to repair the millions of damages to roads, cars, businesses and other properties?

If this could be handled by a formation of a task team what was Tikana doing all these months? Who is going to foot the bill for the damages? If I was one of the people whose car was torched I would sue Santaco.

It’s time that people know that we have laws and there are consequences to your actions.