Panicked Performance: Minister of Fisheries

From: Business Live

The second panic attack was by Agriculture, Forestry and fisheries Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson who arrived at the Cape Town Press Club breakfast to find that her nemesis, Democratic Alliance MP Pieter van Dalen, was in the audience.

      Instead of wowing her audience, who were waiting with baited breathe for her performance, Joemat-Pettersson became hooked on Van Dalen’s presence and offered to leave as she believed that he would use the occasion to make some kind of political statement.

     Her media people argued that the Press Club was not the place for politicians and media only, but they did not do their research properly, because if they had enquired a bit more, by even just looking at the club’s website, they would have realized that all sorts of people who have some kind of general media interest are members.

     The Cape Town Press Club is open to anyone and then they played the race card when obviously losing the debate about whether Van Dalen should be there or not.

     Both events illustrate that there is a woeful lack of proper planning within government. It doesn’t matter how grand a project or how small an event is – the lack of doing the most perfunctory research and the inability to adapt to changing circumstances show a rigidity in political thought that is the real reason for the poor service delivery being experienced today.