Nothing to celebrate on Women's Day in SA

This is what I was talking about when I said there was bad news on the SA health department front last week.

But this sums things up best.

And here's an impassioned rebuke from the Treatment Action Campaign.

In short, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge was the deputy health minister in the ANC. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is the health minister. The two didn't get along. Not long ago, Tshabalala-Msimang was, along with President Thabo Mbeki, an ardent AIDS denialist, espousing the use of garlic, olive oil and beetroot as legitimate cures for HIV/AIDS and denouncing ARVs. Fortunately for South Africans, she was hospitalized due to illness a few years ago, and in that time Madlala-Routledge stepped in and completely revamped SA's HIV/AIDS treatment program. Madlala-Routledge is a major reason why prevalence rates are slowly declining among young people in SA, and why thousands more South Africans are on ARV treatment.

And she was fired by Mbeki on Women's Day, ostensibly over an unapproved trip to Spain for an HIV-vaccination conference at which she was a keynote speaker. But the whole thing is a bit screwy.

She also recently called the situation in some of SA's hospitals a "national emergency," because newborn babies were dying due to staff and equipment shortages. Her "over-hyped" language upset Mbeki and Tshabalala-Msimang. This, along with a long history of rabble-rousing and pot-stirring, seem to be the real reason for her firing.

All in all, a pretty shitty Women's Day in SA.

But now there's weird stuff coming out about Tshabalala-Msimang getting hospital staff to fetch her booze and food while she was in hospital two years ago. I don't know where this fits into the mess, except to remark on the karma.

If you're interested, check out the Mail and Guardian's site for tons of stories.