WeeklySA_AdminPLAN B: ‘Unhappy’ Motsoaledi seeks outside help to implement the controversial NHI Act…
FUN GALORE
with Sy Makaringe
IF EVER there were to be an honest politician in the whole of Mzansi, it would be none other than Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi.
The hardworking Limpopo-born Minister – his spontaneity notwithstanding – does not shy away from calling a spade a spade – no matter who’s toes he might be stepping on. In him, President Cyril Ramaphosa might ingeniously have identified, and found, a fearless public representative with guts to bulldoze the highly contentious National Health Insurance (NHI) to fruition, despite a relentless pushback from the opposition.
Attending the Kgalema Motlanthe Foundation’s Drakensberg Inclusive Growth Forum last week, Motsoaledi tried to sell the country’s national health coverage to a wide spectrum of thought leaders, many of whom are highly critical of the initiative.
But, in a moment of unexpected candour, he made a bewildering, albeit not surprising, admission about government ineptitude, even though continuing almost singlehandedly to seek support for the NHI. The admission came as he tried to explain – not so convincingly – why the plan to publish the first draft regulations on the NHI Act for public comment later this month had been delayed.
“The legal team in the department did draft some health regulations. (But) We were not happy about them. So we have looked for a legal firm outside the department (that) has got drafting skills and experience. They are drafting them. We will soon take them out for public participation,” he told SABC TV.
What brutal honesty!
Now, if the contingent of the highly qualified and generously remunerated legal practitioners in the Department of Health cannot draft their own legal document, and, instead look to outsiders to do their job for them, what hope do we have as ordinary members of the public that the NHI will be successfully implemented?
TIED IN VERBAL KNOTS
SPEAKING of cabinet ministers, spare a thought for Police Minister Senzo Mchunu.
The man who stepped into the shoes of the charismatic Bheki Cele at the beginning of the seventh administration in June this year would rather be digging trenches in Ntuzuma or feeding chickens in Orange Farm than be immersed in the vagaries of Mzansi police minister.
Invariably, his body language kind of gives away a sense of disinterest and detachment from his portfolio on his part.
Ever since the water and sanitation portfolio was inexplicably shorn of him, which he oversaw with so much passion and aplomb, Mchunu seems completely out of place in his new role as the country’s chief crime buster and lacking the zeal of his predecessor.
Even though they probably can see he is bored stiff, police officials still insist on dragging him to media conferences to respond to questions he has absolutely no answers to, often leading him to offer rambling, incoherent and long-winded responses.
Just recently, Mchunu left many journalists dazed at the funeral of 18 Lusikisiki massacre victims when he – speaking on the sidelines – informed them three suspects had been arrested in connection with the multiple murders. A claim that was seemingly not grounded on fact.
Trying to justify the claim or clarify the position, instead the police minister found himself entangled in a web of verbal knots.
He told the journalists, in part: “But they have been arrested for specific cases that will be clarified in court in terms of the charges. But, as I say, it is possible, and mind that operational word, that while people or anyone of them or all of them get charged for a specific case or specific cases, they may be people of interest in other cases as the case may be and an investigation in the meantime is continuing. “This talks to the context under which the 18, the murders of 18 people happened. So, we’re not going to say … If, for instance, anyone of the three appears in any of the cases that Mr King was talking about, we’re not going to arrest, we’re going to arrest.
“But at the same time while arresting him, or her or them for whatever case, they may be, they may be, or anyone of them, they may be people of interest, including for this particular one, that happened on the 18.”
The mind boggles.
JOURNALISM #101
BESIDES being a shrewd and ruthless politician, uBaba is famous and/or infamous for many disparate things. He is a known Zulu traditionalist, a polygamist, a player of note, a master strategist, an ace chess player, a singer, a dancer, a victim … the list is simply inexhaustible. What many people did not know about him until now, though, is that uBaba is also a journalism expert.
This side of former president Jacob Zuma came through at a media conference that his new political kid on the block, the uMkhonto we Sizwe Party, hosted in Sandton last week where he lamented the quality of questions he was supposed to field from the hordes of attending journalists.
The journalists had, among other things, tried to solicit his views on the current United States presidential election race, his comment on the arrest and appearance in court of his benefactor and controversial diamond dealer, Johan Liebenberg, on a R4 billion fraud scandal, whether the MKP would survive beyond his lifetime and the BRICS currency.
The former president was so unimpressed with the questions to the extent that he felt some of the reporters were asking them just for the sake of it. It was on that score that he felt if he were to be a young man again, he would without any solicitation “go and study to be a teacher of journalist (sic)“. This, he said, “would help them with what questions to ask that would help to make those who are doing wrong things to correct themselves”.
SLIP OF THE TONGUE?
UNFORTUNATELY, in his unsolicited brief journalism lecture at the selfsame media conference, Professor Emeritus J Gedleyihlekisa Zuma violated one of the most basic, but fundamental, tenets of journalism – fact checking!
Had he applied this elementary journalism rule to the letter, the self-proclaimed newshound par excellence would not have made the mistake of referring to the disgraced former public protector and EFF defector Busisiwe Mkhwebane as a former member of the ANC.
In a television interview after she had accepted her appointment as uMkhonto we Sizwe Party’s Mpumalanga convener, the Bumbling Busi, was at pains to explain why uBaba made the claim that she was a member of the ANC when she never was one.
However, to protect her new job, which she got courtesy of uBaba’s benevolence to rogue characters like her, the Bumbling Busi deftly ducked telling viewers that Zuma had lied about her membership of the ANC.
Instead, she politely and diplomatically put it all down to “a slip of the tongue”.
This was despite the fact that the former president had spent an inordinate amount of time at the media conference explaining how Bumbling Busi’s comrades in the ANC persecuted her.
It’s either uBaba’s tongue was on a slippery slope or he was speaking in tongues.
A CASE OF DYING TWICE
“THE police retaliated during that process. Four fatalities of the suspects died on the scene.” – Gauteng Provincial Police Commissioner Lieutenant-General Tommy Mthombeni in an interview with Newzroom Afrika news television channel, announcing the incident in which four armed robbery suspects were shot and killed in Alberton, last Saturday afternoon.
The suspects must have each died twice on the scene, I tell you.
