Africa-Press – Lesotho. South Africa’s Gwede Mantashe has a way of shoving his foot in the mouth. He thinks Lesotho has a way of stopping its people from scavenging for gold in South Africa’s disused mines.
In his wisdom (or lack of it), only Lesotho is to blame for the Zama-Zamas and South Africa is a victim of economic sabotage by criminals unleashed from across the border.
He calls illegal mining a “war on our economy”. Expecting a blabbermouth like Mantashe to come up with a cogent and sophisticated explanation for the Zama-Zama crisis will be stretching it.
He has neither the acumen nor the humility to accept that Basotho are mere foot soldiers in a criminal operation controlled by powerful criminals in South Africa.
The gold mined by Basotho is bought by South Africans, some of whom might be senior members of the ANC or sponsoring it. Yeh, I said it! Mantashe should know this because his intelligence service and the police have always known it.
The legitimate mining companies know it as well. Mantashe would ignore these inconvenient fakes and blame the foot-soldiers of a locally controlled criminal enterprise because they are from another country.
He wants Lesotho to chain its men to trees so they don’t cross to work in the mines. Yet we all know that even if Basotho don’t cross to the mines, there will always be someone ready to do the job.
Mantashe will not spill the same bile on the Zimbabwean government because he knows he will be challenged. He is used to bullying Lesotho, a country he views as nothing more than a little district of South Africa.
Lesotho has endured this disdainful attitude from South Africa for years. Unfortunately, his grandstanding will not solve the problem. The Zama-Zamas will continue to be a menace for as long as Mantashe sees it as a problem from Lesotho.
As for the operation to recover the bodies of Basotho who died in the shaft in Harmony Gold, Mantashe should not overrate his importance. If it’s such trouble, he should allow the Zama-Zamas to do it because they can.
They have been pleading for a chance to do it for weeks but Mantashe and his people have been blocking them. No one has asked Mantashe to go down the shaft because we all know his tummy can’t make it through those narrow tunnels.
That ridiculous beard clinging onto his chin like a baby monkey on a mother’s back is not a strong rope. Muckraker also doesn’t expect CR7 to go down the shaft.
His oversized ventilator (you know what Muckraker is talking about) will vacuum the little oxygen in the tunnels. South Africa should close its holes (both literally and figuratively).
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