Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi's initiative was a noble and well-intentioned one, but ...

I had begun singing the praises of Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi in this column yesterday when I suddenly found myself having to do a double take, and a rewrite.

I wanted to commend our premier for his bold action to have his crime prevention wardens “reconfigured” and re-trained to fit in with the law and their purpose. I found that to be commendable. Another premier – or former premier – would have probably ordered an immediate disbandment without a proper plan.

I wanted to applaud Lesufi’s decisive action and undertaking to sort out the “AmaPanyaza” mess, although I thought all this cleaning up could have been done much earlier. It’s a rare but very welcome thing to see a leader realising his mistakes and taking steps to clean up. To err is human.

But as I set about to write this congratulatory piece, before I could type “Well done Premier…” the news broke that the Public Protector had found the wardens initiative to be in breach of the law. KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lt-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi had pronounced the same about the wardens not long ago.

I, therefore, had to moderate my congratulations for Lesufi to a simple expression of gratitude. Let’s all thank Lesufi for at least paving a way forward out of this AmaPanyaza mess. After the redeployments and more training we can then all focus on fighting crime.

This has been another week where our law enforcement hogged the headlines for the wrong reasons as the two police inquiries continued. And we’ve had to brush up on our Oxford English, having to look up simple words like “immediately”, “comrade” and “associate”.

But fellow South Africans, don’t worry, be happy. We ordinary citizens aren’t the ones who’ve gone crazy. Don’t be gaslighted into thinking it’s you who doesn’t understand the English. It’s the disgraced police minister who has a problem – a massive one.

At least Lesufi’s heart was in the right place. He clearly wanted to fight the rampant crime – unlike the minister who seems to have been caught trying to undermine the crime fighters.

The trouble is that Lesufi put the cart before the horse. He meant well and his initiative was a noble one, but the implementation was flawed. Thankfully, he listened to the voice of reason in the end.