The Mbeki government’s compulsion not to be proved wrong is becoming the stamp of his administration. An example was provided by the row this week over the organograms produced by President Thabo Mbeki which he attributed to Judge Willem Heath and which the president said set out to show that both he and Nelson Mandela were implicated in the arms procurement scandal.
When the editor of noseweek, Martin Weltz, publicly claimed authorship of the organograms, pointed out that they were little more than doodles and expressed astonishment that the government should have taken them seriously, the president’s representative, Nazeem Mahatey, commented: “It would seem that Martin Welz is supporting the president’s view that the organogram does not constitute evidence.” Mahatey appeared to be speaking with all seriousness.
Similarly, the indignant denunciation this week of the British Minister for Africa, Peter Hain, over his comments about South African foreign policy with regard to President Robert Mugabe seems to have more to do with our government’s concern for appearances than with Zimbabwe. There is nothing particularly new about what Hain said, and we see no reason to doubt that he spoke with South Africa’s best interests at heart.
To describe his comments as “deeply offensive”, as Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has done, offers little more than empty posturing. The syndrome has been, if anything, even more marked in the government’s handling of the HIV/Aids controversy. When Mbeki was finally overwhelmed by the force of medical opinion on his questioning of the causal link between HIV and Aids, he capitulated by way of an announcement that he was “withdrawing” from the debate, thereby attempting to concede the argument without appearing to surrender.
It now appears that the government has, for practical purposes, conceded on the argument surrounding the question about what is the best way of dealing with the mother-to-child transmission of HIV. As reported in this edition, many of the country’s leading hospitals are introducing “pilot schemes” behind the fig leaf of research to deal with the problem by providing anti-retroviral drugs and taking other steps consistent with the view that a virus is responsible. In all instances the government’s efforts to save face are likely to have the opposite effect.
The attempt to brazen out the blunder over the organograms only has the effect of reinforcing suspicions that the government is engaged in a cover-up. If Mahatey had told the media that there appeared to have been a misunderstanding on the government’s part the incident would have passed with little more than a few horse laughs. The resort to sound and fury in answer to Hain’s well-intentioned comments can only further prejudice foreign perspectives of us. And, now, the reluctance with which the government is giving ground on the Aids issue is in danger of compromising the fight against the syndrome which needs to be pursued with total commitment on the part of government.
“Spin doctoring” designed to save face for the president can all too easily corrupt the public health message which needs to be put across to the population without any “ifs”, or “buts”, or other appearances of uncertainty. As it is, the government and the country owe a huge debt of gratitude to health professionals who have seen where their duty lay with their patients and have quietly worked to the best of their ability to secure the medicine needed for their treatment. Behind many a hospital facade, we suspect, lie untold tales of personal commitment, courage and achievement in uncomfortable circumstances by health professionals in the finest traditions of medicine.
Government of a modern state is difficult enough without the added burdens shouldered by our government by virtue of decades centuries some would say of near-criminal misrule.
The new South Africa will forgive much of its rulers, short of pretence born of overweening pride.
Soccer at stake
When Danny Jordaan sits down next to Sepp Blatter to watch Bafana Bafana play Burkina Faso in Rustenburg on Saturday, the head of the South African Football Association would be well-advised to discuss not how South Africa can get the 2010 World Cup but how the genial Swiss can become the most powerful man in world soccer.
Sweden’s Lennart Johansson believed he was a shoo-in to succeed Joao Havelange when the Brazilian stepped down as president of soccer governing body Fifa in 1998. But Blatter got the job and an implacable enemy in the austere Swede. Johansson heads European ruling body Uefa, which controls the world’s strongest leagues and richest clubs. Fifa and Uefa are going head to head over the transfer system after the European Court declared it illegal.
A task Blatter set himself in 1998 was to standardise the international football calendar. But the club-versus-country row drags on. Top players are giving up international football because their clubs their employers object to losing them for big matches. South African captain Lucas Radebe might be playing his last match for Bafana due to the demands of Leeds, his English club.
Without Uefa’s support for a reorganised international fixture list more players will opt out of playing for their countries. Blatter faces the danger of international soccer becoming a sideshow to the European game.