The Sunday Times is trying to turn Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang into a public figure destroyed by scandal like Oscar Wilde, Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi said on Wednesday.
”I have wondered if [Sunday Times editor Mondli] Makhanya’s modus operandi is to try and force the minister to sue for character defamation so that his paper can cross-examine her at the witness box,” questioned Buthelezi in an online letter.
”This was, of course, the marquess of Queensberry’s successful strategy in his infamous litigation against Oscar Wilde,” he said. ”If I am right, I hope the minister does not take the bait.”
The Sunday Times and the health minister are embroiled in a legal battle over articles the paper published about the minister’s alleged alcohol abuse and theft.
The paper accessed her medical records as part of its research for its articles. The minister says this was an illegal move and the paper should not be allowed to comment any further about her medical records or well-being.
Buthelezi called the widely publicised battle between the two a witch-hunt. ”I fear that there is more than a whiff of something of the 1692 Salem witch-hunt in this sorry saga,” he said.
”In a parliamentary democracy, like ours, it is absolutely correct ministers are held accountable for how they discharge their duties.” However, he said there is a ”clear dividing line” between the minister’s public office and private life, which is not being adhered to in this case.
Buthelezi said claims that the health minister had stolen from a patient while she was working in a Botswana hospital in the 1970s should be contextualised by saying ”let he who is without sin cast the first stone”.
He said it is ”highly unlikely” that President Thabo Mbeki had called up surgeons earlier this year to insist they approve a liver transplant for the minister.
Even if it were to be true, Buthelezi questioned if the outcry about it was not because the president might have phoned for preferential treatment but because the minister was ”unpopular”.
”Would there be such an outcry if the president made such a call on behalf of, say, Madiba or the footballer Jomo Sono?”
Buthelezi also questioned the criticism that the minister’s alleged alcoholism would make her unfit for public office. ”Do ‘self-inflicted’ problems … also include being overweight, diabetic or cancer-related smoking? Fellow parliamentarians beware, and get on that treadmill now!” — Sapa