Stan Mathabatha has put his foot in it

Imagine this for a minute: You are a premier of one of the poorest provinces in the country.

Your government decides to build housing structures for families who live in an overly congested area.

Invitations go out for media coverage bearing your name, official logo and pictures of the structures to be launched.

Come the day, you arrive at the event, cut the ribbon and pose for publicity pictures with beneficiaries of the structures. All seems well until the public begin to ask uncomfortable questions.

Why are you moving people from shacks to shacks, instead of proper housing?

Do you believe this is a demonstration of a service delivery record to be proud of?

And importantly, why do these shacks cost R64,000 each, so much more than the going rate for similar structures?

For Limpopo premier Stan Mathabatha, the attempts at damage control were even more ridiculous than the decision to move families from shacks to shacks. In an interview on Sunday, Mathabatha's spokesperson Kenny Mathivha told this newspaper that the premier did not know the project was to launch shacks.

Confirming a meeting in which the premier summoned MECs to explain, Mathivha said: "The meeting was about the premier trying to establish what tarnished the Limpopo brand on Friday because the premier went there to unveil low-cost housing, he was not briefed that he was going to cut a ribbon for shacks."

To believe this, we must then accept that Mathabatha went to launch a government project for which he had no sufficient knowledge of, yet expected public applause.

We must also accept that the premier would have missed the invitations sent out, in his name, by his office that were readily circulating in the public domain.

If we accept that, then we must raise serious questions about Mathabatha's leadership and the extent of his involvement in matters deemed by his aides to be shining examples of service delivery in Limpopo.

Either way, we must conclude that Mathabatha either has no clue what is being done in his name or has sought to shift the blame for his own poor judgement.