Should we laugh or should we cry?
South African President Thabo Mbeki fired his deputy health minister (Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge).
Madlala-Routledge is best known for being the outspoken and fiercely independent deputy to South Africa's health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. She has reportedly taken a stronger line on the HIV/Aids pandemic than her minister.
Mbeki dismissed her following reports that she had gone to Spain to attend an AIDS conference without his permission. She travelled to Madrid with her son and a consultant at a cost of R160 000 to the taxpayer without seeking Mbeki's approval.
Madlala-Routledge's aides told a newspaper that there had been a mix up in dates and she had already arrived in Spain by the time she received word from the president she should not go.
AIDS activists have been highly critical of her boss, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who promoted garlic and lemons as a remedy for AIDS and mistrusted antiretroviral medicines.
Mbeki attracted flak some years ago for questioning the link between HIV and AIDS.
Tshabalala-Msimang was ill for nine months. Alcohol ADDICTION caused her liver failure.
http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=537601When Tshabalala-Msimang returned to work in June after a liver transplant, her first public gesture was to snub South Africa's national AIDS conference on the grounds that her deputy had been given a more prominent speaking role than her.
After a recent newspaper expose on an Eastern Cape hospital, Madlala-Routledge visited the hospital and declared conditions a "national emergency". She found that the appalling conditions described by a local newspaper report were in fact true and that mothers and babies were dying needlessly. Mbeki, however, backed the defence of conditions offered by his health minister.
Madlala-Routledge, who has been praised by civil society for her stance on the HIV/Aids pandemic, was recently elected to the central committee of the South African Communist Party (SACP). The SACP is in a tripartite alliance with the ANC and the Congress of South African Trade Unions. Reports of infighting in the alliance have proliferated ahead of the scheduled election of the ANC's president in December.
South Africa's main AIDS lobby group, the "Treatment Action Campaign" (TAC) which forced the government to provide free antiretroviral treatment to sufferers, said Mbeki had made a huge mistake.
"This is a dreadful error of judgement that will harm public healthcare and especially the response to the HIV epidemic," the TAC said in a statement.
"It indicates that the president still remains opposed to the science of HIV and to appropriately responding to the epidemic," it said.
On the other side, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge approved the racist dismissal of white employees and contract workers at the Health Department. Furthermore she supported the dishonouring of legal & valid contracts awarded to European service providers on a racial basis.
South Africa's Mbeki sacks minister who questioned AIDS policy
http://www.africasia.com/services/news/newsitem.php?area=...S. Africa Fires Official Praised for Anti-AIDS Work
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/10/world/africa/10safrica....Speech (audio) available here:
Madlala-Routledge ponders set-up theory
http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=...Full media conference (video):
Madlala-Routledge 'nobody's handbag'
http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=...THE MORAL OF THE STORY:
If Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge were an Aids denialist she would still have her job as Deputy Health Minister. But she is not and she has paid the price.
The ostensible reason for her dismissal cannot be shrugged off. We believe dirty tricks were involved in the leaking of an anonymous letter about her unauthorised trip to Spain. But that extravagant venture did show a lack of judgment on her part. Such insensitivity towards the use of taxpayers' money is bad enough.
She should also have realised she was exceptionally vulnerable, given her poor relationships with President Mbeki and Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. The trip gave them ammunition to use against her.
It is no use looking for presidential consistency. Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka remains a darling despite a more scandalously wasteful outing to Dubai, while Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was sacked by her ex-husband for insubordination over an unauthorised flight to Angola.
No, Madlala-Routledge was targeted specifically because she openly acknowledged some of the failures of the Health Department. In interviews last year she admitted disagreeing with the government's policies on Aids. And this year she described conditions and baby deaths at Frere Hospital as "a national emergency". For that she was slapped down by Mbeki.
When Manto was on sick leave she was shown up by Madlala-Routledge. Activists and health workers were reinvigorated, believing that government had turned away from Aids denialism. Mbeki has dealt a huge blow to those hopes. Now the government's Aids policy will be under renewed scrutiny for signs of going backward.
With bumbling Dr Beetroot still in charge, we all know that it's the wrong one who was fired.
http://crimexposouthafrica.net/crimexp/index.php?option=c...
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What really puzzles me is that if you lived on land sitting on Gold,Uranium and Diamonds would you sow white shirts for a living.
Year free people and manly christian sure helps worshiping jesus when you live in the Central African Republic.
Perhaps some boy will get a penny for that bar of gold he !rescued that day so he can at least have half a meal.
Be American free my fellow Africans and you too can be that boy for 5 minutes.
"Rhodesia" may have been a prosperous democratic state for WHITES but it was hell on Earth for a lot of blacks just as life wasn't exactly peachy for the Russians under the Tsars. Think about that dumbshit.
The blacks as well as the whites want a multi-party democracy. Get off your high horse and stop being so asinine, retard.
And you can be sure, the more countries will be destroyed by blacks the more whites will care about fighting blacks.
Nobody can deny one fact:
There are no black countries which are wealthy or secure. Every black country is poor, destroyed full of violence and Aids
wtf is ur comment suposed to mean to me ?????
I'm a Zimbo and always will be The stupid Kaffir in charge might have fucked it but it's still home..
Media and there leftist partners refuse to admit they were wrong.
Since there is no news about the "rainbow paradise" I only asume it is bad, or?
I apologise if I am wrong.