Health Minister Zweli Mkhize.
- The Covid-19 pandemic has tested the “weaknesses” in South Africa’s health system, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize admitted.
- Opposition MPs criticised the government’s response and blamed corruption for decimating the health system.
- ANC MPs, however, were satisfied by the government’s response.
To address weaknesses in South Africa’s health system in the five weeks of the hard lockdown, was “asking a lot”, admitted Health Minister Zweli Mkhize.
He was responding to the debate on the Department of Health’s adjustment budget in a virtual mini-plenary sitting of the National Assembly on Thursday afternoon.
“It was bound to happen that the weaknesses in our system would have been tested,” Mkhize said, adding even the best functioning systems in the world have been tested by the pandemic.
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This after opposition MPs criticised the health system and government’s response to the pandemic.
A recurring theme in the opposition’s criticism is that corruption has decimated South Africa’s health system.
DA MP Siviwe Gwarube said South African could overcome the pandemic if certain key interventions were implemented “that will arrest the free fall that has started to happen in many parts of the country”.
“If we are to choose to prioritise saving lives over internal party politics, then the time to do so is now. The country’s health system inadequacies are not insurmountable. However, they do require strong and decisive leadership.”
“Our challenges require us to accept and deal with the fact that the past two-and-a-half decades of gross mismanagement and corruption by this government have compromised the health system and rendered it almost useless in the face of a global crisis,” Gwarube said.
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“They require an admission that despite the commitment to build health system capacity across the country, provincial health departments, under the leadership of the health minister, have failed to do so.”
Politics of stealing
EFF MP Naledi Chirwa said the “priority at the centre of [the ANC government’s] politics is to continue stealing from the poor”.
She related a string of inadequacies she witnessed at hospitals she visited in the past months.
Chirwa questioned the department’s leadership and said the government was “blatant liars” for saying the public health system was ready to deal with the pandemic.
“This is far from the truth!”
FF Plus MP Phillip van Staden said the government was not caring, as a caring government would provide sustainable health care to its people.
“Still, we see the fear in the eyes of the people of South Africa when they have to visit a state clinic or hospital.”
He said the government did not do its job by readying the system during levels five and four of the lockdown and likened the Eastern Cape to a war zone.
Balancing act
ANC MPs had a rosier view of the government’s response.
ANC MP Mxolisa Sokatsha said: “The ANC-led government has had to find a balance between saving lives and saving livelihoods.”
This has been a recurring theme in many ANC speeches the past week.
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ANC MP Kenny Jacobs said the government had managed to delay the spread to allow the system to be prepared, adding while infections grow, South Africa’s death rate was among the lowest, while its recovery rate was high.
He lauded the adjusted budget to fund the government’s response to the pandemic.
“This has been very well achieved by the ANC-government.”
In his response, Mkhize called for unity, asking that the “temptation to score political points” be avoided.
He agreed with MPs’ concerns about corruption, saying it should be stamped out everywhere it occurred, not only in the health system.
