Watch: repentant Dlamini says she’ll go without a fight if Zuma fires her [video]
All it took was a national outcry, public scorn and the Constitutional Court having to step in to get social development minister Bathabile Dlamini to start doing her job.
Bathabile Dlamini has spoken out about her two weeks from hell – self-inflicted we might add – and has said that should the president decide to fire her she’d go. She knows, of course, that he won’t fire her as she’s the head of the ANC Women’s League and Zuma needs as many allies – however controversial – as he can get at this stage.
Read: #SASSAConCourt and the roast of Bathabile Dlamini. Social media’s got jokes
Anyway, Dlamini was speaking at a social grants roadshow in Kempton park where she said the ConCourt ruling had given her a “second chance in life” that helped her realise she is capable of doing her job. Wow, only now?
Watch: EFF’s Ndlozi gives Bathabile Dlamini an earful during Scopa hearing
Doing her best to try and explain just how the entire mess came to be – she could’ve just come clean and said she messed up and saved everyone a lot of time –, the minister said herself and her department are actually grateful for the ConCourt ruling, even going so far as to praise the court’s ruling as a victory for the people of south Africa. Well, yeah it is a victory for the people of SA, but one that shouldn’t have had to be fought out in a court of law had you done your job.
“I think this should be in the minds of all of us. Before we started here I said to all the Sassa officials‚ let’s calm down and whatever decision [by the court] must be in favour of the people‚” the minister said.
“If it means that the president takes a decision that I must go‚ I can’t stand in the way of corrective measures by the president,” she said, with some members of the crowd shouting “No,” guess which organ of the ANC they belong to…
“I think there must be an understanding that there are people who get very sick in their lifetime and when they get better they say that God has given them a second life. And I think that all of us as Social Development‚ Sassa‚ including the CEO‚ we all understand we’ve been given a second chance in life.”
“We have always said Constitutional Court is important in this matter. Therefore we are all going to act according to the prescripts of the court‚” which would be a first for a senior ANC politician… think Nkandla.
