REPORTED IN THE SA MEDIA:
1. Two years ago the present health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang was alleged to have made an utterance along the lines that she was “going to fix” the ex-deputy health minister, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge.
2. Two years ago the present health minister was alleged to have bribed hospital staff to bring her alcohol while she was lying in a hospital bed awaiting a surgical procedure on her shoulder…mysteriously all her official hospital records of her spell in the facility have vanished without trace…
3. On the eve of Women’s Day 2007, President Mbeki axed the ex-deputy health-minister for conduct unbecoming her position – a debacle around an unauthorised plane trip.
Google any of the above, selecting “pages from South Africa” and you will see a pattern emerging from the “free” objective media of our rainbow nation.
Not once is there any room for the possibility that Mdlala-Routledge deserved to be fired. Not that I’m saying she did – the “facts” available are sketchy at best and have attracted more spin (from both sides of the debate) than Shane Warne could inflict on a wrong ‘un on his best day at the crease.
Nowhere in our insightful press is there any postulation that there may be some kind of smear campaign aimed at Tshabalala-Msimang, the minister that the media loves to hate. And perhaps there isn’t. Perhaps they’re just lazy journalists. It is the latter possibility that asserts itself as the most likely in my view.
Sure she offers up family-sized chunks of ammunition for a media that cannot see further than the end of its nose when she advocates silly things like nutrition in the fight against AIDS. God forbid, ailing people should try and eat right!
Our investigative journalistic sleuths are so cutting-edge that the best they can dredge up on Doctor Dolittle is two fucking years old! Man, they ought to be working for the government – not criticising it!
Faithfully blind (or fatally ignorant) is the media that skirts the issue of the ARV threat to our nation – yes threat. Even by their manufacturers’ own admission, these toxic chemicals bring on the conditions which they are supposed to be curing. But why on earth would a media fixate on such startlingly dangerous drugs which are being dumped on Africa by the million dollar load when they can slag off the dumpy little doctor who says garlic, lemon juice and beetroot are good things to ingest maybe…even…rather…than deadly poisons.
Nah, tosh and nonsense – how can anyone build a multi-billion dollar garlic and beetroot empire? The little doctor and her loopy employer must be smoking the mountain cabbage and buying into the ravings of ill-advised quacks!
But are they? Are they really?
As far as my research is concerned, Mbeki and the good doctor have listened to eminent scientists, leaders in their field, experts on virology and microbiology – oh sorry – they were up until the point where their research produced extremely unpopular (yet soundly scientific) conclusions. But the media wouldn’t know that now would it? Or if it does – it isn’t saying. And that is perhaps even scarier than a couple of genocidal politicians who just won’t buckle down.
A media that won’t tell the truth or at least offer its readers the entire story allowing us - the financiers of press freedom, the right to informed choice, is a very dangerous mechanism indeed. But who am I kidding? That scenario would only play out if democracy was real. And in a real democracy, people don’t starve to death in the streets or wander aimless and homeless without a penny in their pockets. Ergo – there doesn’t exist a real democracy anywhere on this everloving planet of ours.
This media automatically sides with anyone other than Mbeki or Tshabalala-Msimang in matters of governance or policy-making where the health ministry is concerned. It is so much easier than entertaining the unthinkable alternative possibilities involving detachment, objectivity and God forbid – a little cursory research, blended with a tablespoon of logic, a modicum of valour and just a pinch of integrity.
Resultant dish – hard-boiled ostracism and potential professional suicide for daring to swim against the flow of effluent from the mainstream journalism-by-rote brigade.
Does anyone, other than me, find this all a little unbalanced? Just a smidgeon one-sided? Just a trifle odd?
Anyone?
Let us place firmly on the record that the state of public health facilities – i.e. those deigned to serve the masses, those facilities we wouldn’t be seen dead in, (if you’ll pardon the poor metaphor) is abysmal to say the least. I am not defending Manto’s performance in her current post but the oft-time quoted comparison between this “bad” minister and the Teflon-coated Trevor Manuel is actually starting to piss me off big time.
For a start, the hype (well-deserved for the most part) of Mandela’s release, democratic elections, the dismantling of oppressive structures and the reintroduction of South Africa (the New) into the world economy and the desire to be part of its financial renaissance certainly created a platform for success bolstered by foreign investment, newfound stability and a clean slate for an upwardly mobile economy.
I take nothing away from Manuel’s performance – nothing short of brilliant (mostly) but to compare his portfolio to the challenges facing the health ministry is absolute folly. There are little or no comparisons.
The fact is: government policy and dexterous financial management still doesn’t ensure that surplus funds reach those in dire need. This when there is surplus state money (read: our tax Rands) available!
Yet there is far less chance of a correlation to be drawn between this reality and consequential loss of life when people actually starve to death through abject poverty than the potential correlation of it being a health-related issue.
Does anyone, other than me, find this all a little unbalanced? Just a smidgeon one-sided? Just a trifle odd?
Anyone?
Let us place firmly on the record that the state of public health facilities – i.e. those deigned to serve the masses, those facilities we wouldn’t be seen dead in, (if you’ll pardon the poor metaphor) is abysmal to say the least. I am not defending Manto’s performance in her current post but the oft-time quoted comparison between this “bad” minister and the Teflon-coated Trevor Manuel is actually starting to piss me off big time.
For a start, the hype (well-deserved for the most part) of Mandela’s release, democratic elections, the dismantling of oppressive structures and the reintroduction of South Africa (the New) into the world economy and the desire to be part of its financial renaissance certainly created a platform for success bolstered by foreign investment, newfound stability and a clean slate for an upwardly mobile economy.
I take nothing away from Manuel’s performance – nothing short of brilliant (mostly) but to compare his portfolio to the challenges facing the health ministry is absolute folly. There are little or no comparisons.
The fact is: government policy and dexterous financial management still doesn’t ensure that surplus funds reach those in dire need. This when there is surplus state money (read: our tax Rands) available!
Yet there is far less chance of a correlation to be drawn between this reality and consequential loss of life when people actually starve to death through abject poverty than the potential correlation of it being a health-related issue.
Interpretational spin: Did this man die because there wasn’t enough nutrition in his system to sustain him or did he die because he couldn’t afford to feed himself?
The answer to the question is simply that both alternatives are correct. But looking at the two departments highlighted in the scenario, it’s far less likely that we’re gonna have a go at old Trevor’s successful department when the other option is headed up by Manto. It’s a no-brainer!
It’s much easier to think they’re dying because their health is fatally impaired – the health ministry is a sick department anyway isn’t it – it deserves the blame – it simply isn’t delivering.
The concept of a high-flying department, such as the finance ministry, turning out impressive figures year after year, isn’t synonymous with an ailing society – the ethos simply doesn’t gel. But that is exactly what the reality may be. A fatally flawed social structure obtains in the halcyon rainbow state and this jars the sensibilities of those who aren’t directly affected by it but who would love to imagine it should be different by now. People in this upcoming democracy cannot possibly be dying of poverty-related factors – that is unthinkable. Yet thousands of homeless, faceless individuals suffer the same fate in established civilisations like the United States of America and the United Kingdom.
And unlike the supporters clamouring for a stake in SA’s fledgling fiscal potential, there were and remain far fewer takers offering to fix the national primary health care infrastructure – far less glamour, far riskier investments and a much steeper, slippier mountain to climb.
I mean, there were millions of previously-disadvantaged (read: poor black) people queuing in their droves for their promised upliftment courtesy of the new democracy. People who had been marginalised under the previous regime didn’t usually make the newspapers. What chance had the invisible poor of the country then? What chance do they have now?
A better one than previously, I’d wager, unless we’re still not delivering a reasonable roof over their heads, potable drinking water, basic hygiene, and a sustainable standard of living.
And in many cases – those basics are not being delivered – a failure on the part of the greater aspirations of the ANC and certainly not the health ministry in isolation.
These were apartheid’s forgotten victims – not those brutalised by the Bureau of State Security in darkened rooms destined for even darker graves – but the ailing masses that the new government were about to inherit along with its congratulations, fanfares, bunting and copious foreign investments.
This was the ANC’s biggest challenge along with dilemma of educating millions more in a hopelessly inadequate schooling system.
These are the Achilles heels of any governments and the departments that the dim-witted media drones love to criticise because they are the ministries most likely to fuck up regardless of who’s at the helm. Newsworthy to say the least – the stories write themselves. Lazy journalism. Path of least resistance. You get the drift.
Enter and exit Nkosizama Zuma, enter Manto Tshabalala-Msimang – enter the media wolves.
Did anyone bother to highlight Mdlala-Routledge’s acknowledgement that she agreed with and was behind the health ministry’s, and indeed the Minister’s, present position on HIV AIDS? It was right there in her press statement along with the “she’s said she was gonna fix me” remarks.
Regardless of whether she was instrumental in getting the health department to that point is irrelevant. She quite clearly stated that she supported where the minister was at. Yet it got downplayed in favour of the other insinuations that would reflect poorly on Manto.
It’s all so tiresomely predictable.
The media cannot wait for Mbeki’s reign to conclude in order for them to sing the praises of some new vibrant health-minister who will most likely accede to the demands of the incoming administration and the weight of popular opinion.
Will it be so?
Or will Mbeki’s legacy offer up a more resilient successor?
I certainly hope so – even if it just to provide another whipping post for a pusillanimous, myopic media still anchored to the echoes of their predecessors – just mixing up the verbiage a little to give it a fresh, new appearance. As Rodriguez once said sublimely: “A monkey in silk is a monkey no less…”
If we have someone like Jacob Zuma to look forward to as our guiding light for the future, then perhaps we deserve all the crap that rains down upon us and perhaps we deserve to remain largely impoverished, while supporting American and European drug cartels who continue to use Africa as a dumping ground for their poisonous obsolescence.
If we can’t and don’t challenge the media on issues such as this until the full story is revealed timeously (not after the fact), then we truly do deserve the bilge our sycophantic media dredges up to us daily.
And if we choose to swallow this selective, expurgated garbage as an ongoing dietary staple, it is small wonder the health of our nation is so horribly impaired.
It’s much easier to think they’re dying because their health is fatally impaired – the health ministry is a sick department anyway isn’t it – it deserves the blame – it simply isn’t delivering.
The concept of a high-flying department, such as the finance ministry, turning out impressive figures year after year, isn’t synonymous with an ailing society – the ethos simply doesn’t gel. But that is exactly what the reality may be. A fatally flawed social structure obtains in the halcyon rainbow state and this jars the sensibilities of those who aren’t directly affected by it but who would love to imagine it should be different by now. People in this upcoming democracy cannot possibly be dying of poverty-related factors – that is unthinkable. Yet thousands of homeless, faceless individuals suffer the same fate in established civilisations like the United States of America and the United Kingdom.
And unlike the supporters clamouring for a stake in SA’s fledgling fiscal potential, there were and remain far fewer takers offering to fix the national primary health care infrastructure – far less glamour, far riskier investments and a much steeper, slippier mountain to climb.
I mean, there were millions of previously-disadvantaged (read: poor black) people queuing in their droves for their promised upliftment courtesy of the new democracy. People who had been marginalised under the previous regime didn’t usually make the newspapers. What chance had the invisible poor of the country then? What chance do they have now?
A better one than previously, I’d wager, unless we’re still not delivering a reasonable roof over their heads, potable drinking water, basic hygiene, and a sustainable standard of living.
And in many cases – those basics are not being delivered – a failure on the part of the greater aspirations of the ANC and certainly not the health ministry in isolation.
These were apartheid’s forgotten victims – not those brutalised by the Bureau of State Security in darkened rooms destined for even darker graves – but the ailing masses that the new government were about to inherit along with its congratulations, fanfares, bunting and copious foreign investments.
This was the ANC’s biggest challenge along with dilemma of educating millions more in a hopelessly inadequate schooling system.
These are the Achilles heels of any governments and the departments that the dim-witted media drones love to criticise because they are the ministries most likely to fuck up regardless of who’s at the helm. Newsworthy to say the least – the stories write themselves. Lazy journalism. Path of least resistance. You get the drift.
Enter and exit Nkosizama Zuma, enter Manto Tshabalala-Msimang – enter the media wolves.
Did anyone bother to highlight Mdlala-Routledge’s acknowledgement that she agreed with and was behind the health ministry’s, and indeed the Minister’s, present position on HIV AIDS? It was right there in her press statement along with the “she’s said she was gonna fix me” remarks.
Regardless of whether she was instrumental in getting the health department to that point is irrelevant. She quite clearly stated that she supported where the minister was at. Yet it got downplayed in favour of the other insinuations that would reflect poorly on Manto.
It’s all so tiresomely predictable.
The media cannot wait for Mbeki’s reign to conclude in order for them to sing the praises of some new vibrant health-minister who will most likely accede to the demands of the incoming administration and the weight of popular opinion.
Will it be so?
Or will Mbeki’s legacy offer up a more resilient successor?
I certainly hope so – even if it just to provide another whipping post for a pusillanimous, myopic media still anchored to the echoes of their predecessors – just mixing up the verbiage a little to give it a fresh, new appearance. As Rodriguez once said sublimely: “A monkey in silk is a monkey no less…”
If we have someone like Jacob Zuma to look forward to as our guiding light for the future, then perhaps we deserve all the crap that rains down upon us and perhaps we deserve to remain largely impoverished, while supporting American and European drug cartels who continue to use Africa as a dumping ground for their poisonous obsolescence.
If we can’t and don’t challenge the media on issues such as this until the full story is revealed timeously (not after the fact), then we truly do deserve the bilge our sycophantic media dredges up to us daily.
And if we choose to swallow this selective, expurgated garbage as an ongoing dietary staple, it is small wonder the health of our nation is so horribly impaired.
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