Dr Who?

Home / Health / Dr Who?

Government ministers generally travel first class. Some do it because they believe it is in keeping with their status and others because it stops the traveling public from getting too close and personal.

On April 28 this year German traveler, Jentz von Wichtingen, was traveling first class between Frankfurt and Johannesburg. After boarding the plane he realized he had been seated next to South African health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.

There are many versions of the on-board verbal slanging match that subsequently ensued. Apparently Von Wichtingen had approached a flight attendant and had asked to be moved as he preferred not to sit next to someone ‘who is responsible for the death of thousands of South Africans’.

Tempers flared, voices were raised and the minister eventually told Von Wichtingen to ‘f*(&k off’, or words to that effect.

The incident made headlines and set the airwaves humming for at least a week as talk show hosts and their listeners relished and regurgitated the story until the marrow had been sucked out of it.

From the beginning of her appointment of Minster of Health in 1999, Mantombazana Edmie Tshabala-Msimang has been haunted by bad press. Her predecessor, Dr Nkosazana Zuma also clashed with the media over among others the Sarafina and Virondene scandals.

When Tshabalala-Msimang took over it was thought that she would be, unlike her predecessor, less controversial. Little did they know.

Some of the bad press Tshabalala-Msimang has received is deserved. There have been occasions where she has opted to speak her mind where it may have been wiser,less naive and politically astute to keep quiet.

There is also agreement that on many occassions she has unfairly been taking all the flack for government’s perceived reluctance to respond to the AIDS epidemic while the president is let off the hook, opting to withdraw from the AIDS debate.

As Farouk Chothia and Sean Jacobs point out in ‘Thabo Mbeki’s world’: ‘Advisers who differ sharply with their presidents or advocate a radical shift in policy seldom survive, and Mbeki’s presidency is no exception.’

This has led to Tshabalala-Msimang and many others in the Mbeki circle gaining the reputation of being his master’s voice. They shield the president from counterattack and keep his reputation unsullied while they become scapegoats.

A search of media archives reveal an overwhelmingly unflattering portrait of the minister with most of the insults as a result of her public responses to the HIV/AIDS pandemic:

‘Manto mad as a wet hen’, ‘The madness of Queen Manto’, ‘Miffed Manto’, ‘Dr Doolittle’ and the one that has stuck ‘Dr No’.

While Manto’s public persona might be one that of a stubborn, ideologue who is blindly loyal to President Thabo Mbeki, few South Africans know who she really is.

Born in Durban almost 63 years ago, Tshabalala-Msimang went to the historic Inanda Seminary in Kwa-Zulu-Natal where she matriculated in 1959.

The National Party had been in power for almost 10 years, more and more legislation entrenching apartheid was being passed. For most South Africans the situation had become untenable.

Three years later Tshabalala-Msimang graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Fort Hare, where many before her such as Nelson Mandela had studied. When the ANC was banned in 1962, Tshabalala-Msimang joined Mbeki and 26 other students who had been ordered by ANC leadership to go into exile.

The students had been identified as future leaders who would one day return once the ANC came into government.

The young students fled under the guise of being a football team (without any kit or uniforms) and after two months of hell, including arrest and six weeks in a Bulawayo jail, they finally landed in Dar es Salaam, at the time the newly independent African state of Tanganyika.

Writer Mark Gevisser, Thabo Mbeki’s biographer, describes a photograph on the wall of the president’s study in his Cape Town home: ‘A group of young, well-dressed men and women advance in an exhilarating ‘V’ towards the camera, their triumph at having arrived safely in exile captured by the silvery hyperreality of the print, as if black people have found themselves inexplicably in some grand, ‘50s Hollywood epic. And here they are. Some like Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, have their fists in the air.’

Tshabalala-Msimang recalled in earlier interviews how she had promised her mother that she would use her time in exile to study and return as a medical doctor.

Various countries , including Russia, supported the ANC by offering tertiary education to exiles.

This is how Tshabalala-Msimang ended up seven years later graduating as a doctor from the First Leningrad Medical Institute in the fomer Soviety Union.

What made the achievement so extraordinary is that the young exile completed the degree in Russian, a language she still speaks fluently.

Her 28 years in exile were spent practicing medicine in various African countries with academic stints in between. Among others, she read for a Masters in Public Health from the University of Antwerp in Belgium.

She also worked as a registrar in the Obstetrics and Gynaecology section at the Muhimbili Hospital in Das es Salaam and as medical superintendent at Lobatse Hospital in Botswana.

It was during exile that Tshabalala-Msimang gave birth to her two daughters Phulane, a a lawyer in London and Zuki, a doctor in the United States.

‘She has always said how tough it was bringing up her children while in exile. They did not always understand why their mother was sad when she received news from home that someone was sick or people were being killed as in 1976,’ said a close friend.

During her travels Tshabalala-Msimang always tries to spend a night or two with her children and grandchildren Khaya and Khethiwe, both whom she describes as the light of her life.

While is exile Tshabalala-Msimang met Mendi, her ‘husband, political comrade and closest friend’.

Despite being able to spend little time together (Mendi is Treasurer General of the ANC), their union has remained strong with friends describing them as eternal newlyweds.

The late Steve Tshwete is also described as one of her pillars of strength and closest friends while she was in exile.

What would come as a surprise to many is that Tshabalala-Msimang is credited for putting HIV/AIDS on the ANC’s agenda even before she returned from exile.

‘This is why so many are at a loss to understand her present approach,’ said a source. ‘She forced them in the eighties already to take note and formulate a plan of action.’

The National Party’s withdrawal from Nelson Mandela’s Government of National Unity in 1996 catapulted Tshabalala-Msimang from her job as a health activist at the National Progressive Primary Healthcare Network to chair of Parliament’s portfolio committee on Health and later deputy minister of Justice.

Since taking over the reigns as health minister, Tshabalala-Msimang has been credited with among others implementing tobacco laws that have been applauded around the world. She has also focused a huge amount of energy on decreasing South Africa’s maternal death rate. ‘She believes that women should not have to die while giving birth or shortly afterwards,’ said an aide.

Tshabalala-Msimang is credited as the driving force behind the training of forensic nurses who treat (kindly, sympathetically and empathetically) women who have been raped or battered.

The nurses have been trained to gather evidence and document the evidence in such a manner that convictions can be achieved in court.

Although Tshabalala-Msimang had agreed to be interviewed for this article, it proved impossible to find time in her diary, perhaps a reflection of her work ethic.

‘She is one of the most hard working ministers in the Cabinet,’ said a close aide.

She tells of Tshabalala-Msimang’s growing frustration at trying to pin her management team down for a weekly meeting. ‘Eventually she told us that we would be meeting at 6.30am on a Monday and that is now the status quo,’ said the aide.

Advocate Patricia Lambert, Tshabalala-Msimang’s legal advisor, has been working for the minister since her appointment as the Deputy Minister of Justice in Nelson Mandela’s cabinet.

‘Then already it was common for her to call meetings at 6am. She has an incredible capacity for work. In the past four years I think she has taken 14 days leave and that includes Saturdays and Sundays. If she’s not busy with health department work she is busy with ANC work. You can bet your bottom dollar that she will be the first one in the building in the mornings,’ says Lambert.

Lambert and others describe Tshabalala-Msimang as a formidable force on the international stage.

‘There is no doubt that she is one of the most well respected health ministers because of our country’s strong focus on health,’ says Lambert.

Number 15 on the ANC list, Tshabalala-Msimang enjoys a high level of popularity and political support within the ANC.

As one aide said: ‘It is clear that the community where the media is pitching is not her main constituency, but at community level they are absolutely mad about her.’

Allister Sparks comes close to trying to come to grips with the exile community in his book ‘Beyond the Miracle’.

He attempts to understand the differences between the Mandela era (dominated by political prisoners) and the Mbeki era, dominated by the exile community.

‘In large measure the difference between the two stem from the different life experiences that moulded them in the course of the long, searing struggle against apartheid.

‘Whereas the prisoners were thrown together in close proximity for years on end, the exiles lived a peripatetic and often precarious existence scattered around the globe. It meant that being in the good books of an individual leader could decide whether you were located in relatively comfortable circumstances.

‘More important still, the exiles were vulnerable to infiltration by agents of the apartheid regime and over time the devastating success of these spies engendered a paranoia within the exiled leadership that discouraged openness and led to a more centralized command structure. Mbeki has chosen his closest aides and ministers for their proven loyalty.’

Only time will tell whether this loyalty will see the rise or fall of Tshabalala-Msimang.

Click here to e-mail author.

Author

Health-e News

Health-e News is South Africa's dedicated health news service and home to OurHealth citizen journalism. Follow us on Twitter @HealtheNews
View all posts