Dr. Beetroot is feeding beetroots

Dr. Beetroot is dead

It is with sadness that one reads of the passing of Dr. Manto Tshabalala Msimang [1] of South Africa, she was if you have forgotten the Health Minister during the tenure of President Thabo Mbeki.

This is significant because a certain study avers that between 2005 and 2008 about 300,000 South Africans died from HIV/AIDS whilst the President and his Health Minister took on the view that HIV did not really cause AIDS, that HIV/AIDS medication was too expensive and this medication could sometimes be harmful.

Speaking out of turn

It could well be that they had valid arguments but some of what they said did not have relevant research to support the claims, meanwhile, their fellow countrymen languished in the ravaging grip of the disease.

The Doctor in a conference on AIDS in Canada then went on to advise that people with HIV/AIDS should take olive oil, lemon, beetroot and the African potato which offered beneficial qualities to sufferers.

It is from this statement that she became widely known as Dr. Beetroot. Indeed healthy diets are necessary and there is a poverty issue related to it in terms of taking drugs but not associating that with rich diets that would help the efficacy of those drugs, but the drugs were essential.

The bad legacy of suspicion

It needed a willingness of the Mbeki government to acknowledge there was a problem with about 20% of the population affected, to consider negotiations allowing for drugs to be made available for more affordable cost and to have socio-economic plans implemented to lift people out of poverty into conditions that would be conducive to fighting the disease effectively.

By pandering to the politics of suspicion borne of their old apartheid struggles they failed many even though the people blindly supported this stance for the brotherhood of the liberation struggles.

Change eventually

Common sense eventually prevailed after activism, global opprobrium and with a very competent deputy Health Minister who later got sacked for lacking the loyalty of being a team-player whilst Dr. Beetroot was retained with her rumoured alcoholism problem and liver disease issues.

That, I think was one of the low points of President Mbeki’s tenure for all the great things he might have achieved. When Mr. Mbeki was ousted, and Dr. Beetroot was replaced, we all heaved a sigh of relief.

Much as one is saddened, one is outraged that political expediency reigned over a situation that should have had a more compassionate and responsible handling – the death of Dr. Beetroot marks the end of the embarrassment South Africa became in the fight against HIV/AIDS as personified in the office and statements she made.

Sources

[1] BBC News - South Africa HIV-row minister Tshabalala-Msimang dies

Pissed Dr. Beetroot stole my liver

A South African Maelstrom

It would appear I have pitched my tent in Southern Africa over the last week and not without reason.

Mr. Thabo Mbeki seems to have stirred the hornet’s nest and will come a-stinging without respite.

As the Economist opines in their leader of last week, Mr. Mbeki sacked the wrong minister by sacking the deputy rather than the substantive holder of the portfolio.

Much as been made of the relationship that goes back 40 years between Dr. Beetroot and Mr. Mbeki and that leader goes on to say that he has favoured loyalty over competence.

In-bred cliques

Indeed, any leader would want all his “Yes-men” to be competent, but as we have in the Bush administration where 150 of the staff are from the Regent University which was founded by Pat Robertson.

When leaders fail to make their teams a broad church representative of all spectra of the people they govern, they lose out on competencies that might not necessarily be prevalent in their nominal entourage of fawning admirers.

It cannot be said that this clique of alumni of what is essentially a Christian Madrasah have not influenced policy and skewed debate in on the hot-button issues like abortion, gay-rights, stem-cell research, the projection of American might and Middle-East issues.

In a stealing position again

However, back to South Africa, the gloves have now come off for both Mr. Mbeki and Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the ailing Health Minister with the credibility of the president at stake.

A news investigation has revealed what might turn out to be a rotten scandal. Dr. Beetroot is alleged to have jumped the queue for a liver transplant whilst suffering from alcoholism.

This had better not be true, but the government has come out with a half-hearted rebuttal of this story being “false and speculative”.

Beyond that, another story emerged that Dr. Beetroot was convicted – not just caught and charged or reprimanded – she was convicted of stealing from a patient when she worked as a medical superintendent in Botswana.

Loyalty paybacks

What makes this story look like the ebbing before a humongous tsunami is there allegation that the President brought his office and influence to bear on the surgeons to approve the transplant for the minister.

In effect, leaving this liability of a Health Minister to thrive when she should have been summarily sacked years ago is about to drag the President into a quagmire he would wish he has the means to escape.

I would suspect there is more to come to substantiate these allegations with the other skeletons that might fall out of cupboards to embrace those not looking.

There definitely would have been others genuinely in need of a liver transplant not given to drink, that person has been sacrificed on a less than principled premise of retaining incompetence and ridicule.

Thereby, nepotism and outrageous influence peddling in a country shaking off the shackles of apartheid is about to tarnish the work of those gone before.

If anything can be learnt from this matter, it is that blind loyalty can sink the sycophant and the master whilst obvious competence does elevate the proponent and the master might just have to learn to live with it and the lesser satisfaction that they had the foresight to chose the competent person in the first place.

References

How a 'fourth tier' religious law school infiltrated the US Government