Moemish or telling the truth? Fikile Mbalula's dragged over BBC interview

“That BBC interview with Fikile Mbalula just exposed that our 'leadership' are leaders because they were there to fight apartheid, not because they have the brains for it.”

This is one of the remarks from people who expressed their reactions to the transport minister's recent interview on the BBC's HARDtalk. 

On Wednesday, Mbalula sat down with the popular UK news programme to shed some light on the unrest in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. 

He described the unrest as a “failed insurrection” by plotters who had a “field day”. 

“The insurrection is the ultimate end of coup plotters ... The grounds for them were not fertile because to have an insurrection you've got to have a weakened state in the form of the police and soldiers to maintain law and order.

“On our part, the response to this was delayed with a couple of days and that gave them a field day, but for all the days they had, the plotters, they couldn't achieve that.”

Mbalula said instigators “wanted, attempted, mobilised, orchestrated, and called for the sabotage of key economic elements”. 

He said the evidence supporting the government's theory that an insurrection was behind the unrest was “overwhelming”,  but did not provide any of this evidence when questioned.

Mbalula's comments come just days after defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said the riots were a result of “counterrevolution”, seemingly contradicting President Cyril Ramaphosa’s statement.

However, Mapisa-Nqakula later made a U-turn, saying she made a mistake after acting minister in the presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said her views on the unrest were ill-informed.

“The president has spoken. It was an attempted insurrection. I confined myself to counterrevolutionary but ultimately, remember, any element of counterrevolution may lead to insurrection in a country,” Mapisa-Nqakula said.

On social media, many users had a field day of their own, weighing on the interview. The views expressed by many saw the minister's name topping the trending list: