GARETH VAN ONSELEN: Fikile Mbaloser, sports minister of failure
The sports minister is known as Razzmatazz, and with good reason — all he seems to be able to produce is hot air. Oh, and a consistent record of failure and regression for SA sporting endeavours
It takes a special kind of person to lose something you have already won. But if anyone is capable of delivering that particular flavour of incompetence, it is sports minister Fikile Mbalula. Sure enough, he recently obliged, cancelling SA’s bid for the 2022 Commonwealth Games at a cost of about R120m. The city of Edmonton, in Canada, SA’s only competitor for the games, had withdrawn from the race as far back as February 2015. At the time Mbalula said: "As a ministry and department we [will] put all our efforts in[to] ensuring that the bid to host the Commonwealth Games is successful." He said: "We are negotiating from a position of strength." Alas, all that effort and influence came to naught. It often does where he is concerned.In 2015, Mbalula had said: "We expect up to R20bn in output to the economy which thus translates to R11bn in GDP growth delivered by the 2022 Commonwealth Games." Last week, he said: "We want the games, the games will benefit us economically, but not at all...
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