State Security Minister David Mahlobo has almost everyone laughing at him after he claimed on Tuesday his department knew about violent protests in Vuwani a year before they happened. If the state security minister knew this a year in advance, then he must have been able to gather enough intelligence to prevent 20-plus schools from being burned down in the area.
A false prophet maybe? Why didn't Mahlobo act when he had a chance?
He told eNCA on Wednesday morning that intelligence was deployed but in an area like Vuwani, there is a lot of plantations, which makes stopping protests more tricky.
"They'll actually do the burning from this side and go to the other side. Those are some of the issues," he said.
In the interview above with HuffPostSA, Mahlobo said journalists should not make assessments of failure from the intelligence department when they don't understand what goes into the work they do.
"The message I was sending was: sometimes journalists are not actually experts in the field, they want to jump to conclusions," he said.
Reporters laughed during the briefing, and based on his facial expression, people seemed to think Mahlobo realised that what he had said wasn't good for anyone involved.
From this statement, people are drawing out the fact that Mahlobo clearly sits on vital information and doesn't do anything to help people out of those situations.
These are some of the funniest things people say Mahlobo knew about but didn't tell us.