Politics.za

Fired Deputy Minister of Health Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge is slamming government but big time on the radio during her press conference (in progress live on 567 CapeTalk/Radio 702). This is probably the best example ever of a high level cabinet member coming out so publicly against the President’s office.

Hopefully this is a turning point. The ramifications against Mbeki before the ANC NEC in December could be huge.

The firing of Deputy Health Minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge will be remembered as another short-sighted blunder by the Mbeki administration. The pretext for the firing was Madlala-Routledge’s unauthorised trip to an AIDS conference in Spain. Her party left OR Tambo international airport under the (false) assumption that the President’s Office had authorised the trip and when they arrived in Spain and found this was not the case, they headed straight back home. The entire affair cost R161 000.

That’s the pretext. Everyone with two brain cells to rub together knows that she was fired because of the statements she made about government’s AIDS policy while she was acting minister during Health Minister Manto Tshabalal-Msimang’s long illness (and subsequent liver transplant). Let’s just say her views on AIDS treatment (using anti-retrovirals and medical research) clashed with Mbeki and Msimang’s (garlic, beetroot and whatever Thabo found on the internet the previous night).

This is all indicative of the level of paranoia and control that rules Mbeki’s administration. Why does a deputy minister have to get permission from the president’s office to travel overseas officially? And why are other cabinet ministers who have cost South Africa untold billions of Rands in bungled policy and administration allowed to continue in their posts?

When I saw this headline I initially thought it was (yet another) typo on IOL: The workers want their liver back!. I assumed they had meant ‘lives’ for ‘liver’, but on clicking the link it became clear that striking hospital workers were in fact demanding the return of Minister of Health Manto Tshabala-Msimang’s new transplanted liver.

“The workers want their liver back!” “Dr Beetroot, Garlic we gave yo our liver with love, now you we demand it back by force,” read some of the placards on show from the marchers who included municipal workers and other Cosatu affiliates.

“Manto rose from grave to talk sh*t”, read yet another poster.

Barely two days back on the job Minister of Health makes another puzzling comment:

Tshabalala-Msimang faulted private hospitals for spending R66bn on treating only 7-million people while the state had only R59bn for the treatment of more than 30-million.

I’m not sure if Manto was misquoted, I hope she was. The fact of the matter is that private hospitals didn’t spend R66 billion on 7 million patients, those 7 million patients spent R66 billion on themselves. That government spends only R59 billion on 30 million patients (roughly R2000 per patient per year) is more of an embarrassment for Manto than for the private sector.

I just hope the plan is to raise the amount spent on public health care, not decrease the amount spent in the private sector and then pretend that the two are equal.

Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is not recovering very well. After being admitted back into hospital for a lung infection she has now received a liver transplant(!). I don’t know what ailment she is suffering from but it seems pretty bad to be affecting both her lungs and kidney functions.

I hope she gets better but I can’t help but wonder if this isn’t the perfect time for government to gently ask for her resignation so that her deputy Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge (who seems to have a plan of action from AIDS) can take over from acting Health Minister Jeff Radebe.

In my opinion, it’s high time for a cabinet shuffle. Despite the renewed statements committing themselves to delivery and better governance it’s still the same old of bunch of ministers that have lead us to what is becoming more and more of an administration so unsure of what to do next they’re too afraid to make a move. Here are the top four ministries that need a shake up.

• Health: It’s becoming apparent that Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is not healthy. After a lengthy stay in hospital for a lung infection she came out and gave a press briefing in which she was clearly not with it mentally and is now back in hospital. We know that Mbeki has protected Manto in the past but it’s clear her wacky views on HIV treatment are making him look an idiot. With her back in hospital it’s an ideal opportunity for her to ‘retire’ due to ‘health reasons’ and get someone in who will bring some international respect back to the Health Department.

• Communications: It’s not often that one person can cost a country billions of Rands but in the case of Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri we have a candidate. In the eight years since she’s been minister South Africa has had the highest communication costs in the entire world. ICASA is possibly the most ineffective regulator on the planet and meanwhile Telkom racks up billions in profit off infrastructure our taxes paid for. And then to add insult to injury just this morning she blamed the ‘private sector’ for not helping out in the local loop unbundling process, forgetting the fact that she had previously made self provisioning illegal.

• Public Enterprises: Thanks to Alec Erwin being asleep at the wheel while SA’s economy grew without a corresponding growth in power generation we can now look forward to five years of power blackouts. Meanwhile SAA needs a few hundred million Rand to bail themselves out of debt, but yet have the ability to launch a low cost airline. And when he’s not losing SA stacks of cash he’s involved in intra-governmental fights with our previous candidate Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri about who gets to control the state broadband infrastructure.

• Home Affairs: Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula has not been in the position as long as the others listed above but one thing is certain, Home Affairs is as much a mess as the day she took over. Mapisa-Nqakula has made a step in the right direction asking for help from some of the other departments to help in sorting the place out but it may be too little too late. Departmental officials are leaving first chance they can, and the organisation needs a Sargent-Major more than a Director-General.

There are a whole bunch of other ministers who need a swift kick in the pants. Feel free to add your own recommendations in the comments.

Despite being the underlying cause of thousands of death each year pathologists in South Africa are not currently permitted to specify AIDS as the cause of death, instead they have to write down the opportunistic infection (such as Tubercolosis) that deals the final blow.

If Aids could be entered as the cause of death, South Africa would for the first time be able to measure the extent of mortality related to the disease.

For the first time?!? Shouldn’t the Dept of Health know that already?

There has been a palace coup in the Health ministry while Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has been in hospital. Over the past three weeks, Tshabalala-Msimang’s deputy, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, and Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka have seized control of the country’s HIV/Aids programme.

Considering the protection Manto seemed to have from Mbeki I wonder if this happened with his approval or if Mlambo-Ngcuka is throwing her weight around independently.

Minister of Health Manto Tshabala was checked into hospital over the weekend after coming down with a lung infection. In order to show solidarity with her fellow citizens she chose to be checked into Johannesburg Public Hospital.

Well kind of. You see Manto checked into the private wards of the Johannesburg hospital. The private wards are a way for those who can pay for it to get private level health care at public hospitals. Except as DA health spokeman Jack Bloom explains:

They are so badly managed, in fact, that they lose about R1-million a year. This is a unique case of the poor subsidising the better-off.

Two quick news articles from KZN, both not so good.

NADECO, the IFP slinter offshoot party, seems to be pulling a PAC as it spirals down in flames. When NADECO started there was quite a bit of coverage in the media about how much damage they would do to the already wounded IFP. Well I guess the IFP can sleep a bit easier tonight what with various NADECO leaders calling each other a “bunch of clowns”.

Professor Gita Ramjee, of the Medical Research Council in Durban, said that in one area of the South Coast the HIV prevalence level in women was as high at 70 percent, while in the Embo area near Botha’s Hill researchers found a prevalence level of more than 66 percent.

Well so much for garlic, lemons and beetroot.