WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2007-10-04 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: Jan
[When they start with this legalistic bulldust you must know, the accusations are TRUE! She’s a thief and doesn’t want to admit it. Jan]
By Fiona Forde
“If it’s a question I’m capable of answering, I will answer that question,” Manto Tshabalala-Msimang assures.
Yet minutes later the health minister refuses to confirm or deny whether there are further allegations of theft and misconduct lurking in her past.
This day last week, as Tshabalala-Msimang touched down in Congo-Brazzaville, she was acutely aware of the string of damning allegations that were blazing in her trail.
Claims of alcoholism, a diagnosis of kleptomania, stories of abusive behaviour on top of allegations of nepotism and opportunism had hailed down heavily upon her in recent weeks amid growing public antipathy towards the department over which she presides.
But whoever said a week can be a long time in politics must surely have had 66-year-old Manto in mind when they coined the phrase.
While she paid meticulous attention to the World Health Organisation summit she attended throughout last week, the beleaguered cabinet member managed to keep an eye on events back home.
On Friday, just hours before she boarded an aircraft back to South Africa, she broke her silence on the saga and told Weekend Argus just how warmly she welcomed Thursday’s Johannesburg High Court ruling that her medical records be returned to the Cape Town Medi-Clinic.
“Yes, I have won the case. But it is the health-care system that has been vindicated and the people of South Africa in particular. This might be about myself, but it is their victory,” she said diplomatically, but with a triumphant smile.
Three weeks ago today, the minister of health woke to sensational media reports of her alleged outrageous personal behaviour during a stay in a Cape Town clinic two years ago when she underwent surgery to her shoulder.
She was said to have abused hospital staff, turned up her nose at the food, and demanded alcohol.
A week later as the newspapers began to widen its probe, it was announced she was also a convicted thief. It emerged that she had been convicted 31 years ago for stealing not only from the patients she attended while a doctor, but also from the Botswana hospital that paid her wage.
As the digging continued, it was also said that she wasn’t the most suitable candidate for the liver she received five months ago, given her age and her alleged addiction to alcohol.
Not only that, the newspaper claimed she had forced her way to the top of the waiting list to get the transplant.
Worse was to follow when it was reported she continues to drink, in questionable amounts, to this day.
Last weekend, as the story refused to go away, a Botswana government official told Weekend Argus he had a letter from a psychiatrist urging leniency in her case because she was a diagnosed kleptomaniac.
And while she says she “would rather not comment” on her criminal past in Botswana, arguing that “there are still many other options open to me”, she is cryptic concerning the reported kleptomania diagnosis.
“It’s just an interpretation,” she argues. “It’s their interpretation.”
Well, is she or isn’t she?
“Are you an investigative journalist now?” she chides.
Just looking for a yes or no answer, I explain.
“That’s too personal for me to answer,” she says.
However, the fact that a government minister had been convicted for theft is a story that few will forget. Last week, the ANC came out in her support, arguing that the decades-old incident belonged to the past.
Furthermore, it had no bearing on her constitutional right to hold the public office that she does. The party spokesman said he wasn’t aware of any other charges of theft relating to the controversial minister.
So we asked her ourselves. But the question disquieted her aide so much he tried to bring the interview to a halt.
Tshabalala-Msimang intervened.
“I will not run away from that question.”
Then she said flatly, adopting the first hardened stance during our conversation: “(The media) will give you the answer to that. And one day I will have my say, and I will talk.”
She refused to say anything else on the matter, and also refused to comment on whether her past may provide further fuel for damning allegations to be made.
“I really don’t know whether this is over,” she says with a concerned look.
She said the allegations in the Sunday Times three weeks ago had come as “a complete surprise”.
“I actually was not expecting this.”
While she is still grappling to understand the underlying motive for it all, she likens it to strategies of bygone times.
“For me, it’s Stratcom-like, very Stratcom-like,” she says, referring to the apartheid government’s programme of “strategic communications” – spreading negative propaganda or disinformation against its enemies.
Much of this comes with the territory, she says, adding: “Let’s not forget the vilification of the former health minister (now Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma).”
Yet many wonder at the protection she enjoys at the right hand side of the chief, Thabo Mbeki.
“Why should I suddenly distance himself from him?” she demands.
“He’s not my enemy. We’ve never crossed swords. Suddenly because you are a loser you must distance yourself from your friends,” she exclaims.
“You know they say he was a drinking buddy of mine in Moscow.” She scoffs at the very thought of it. “What can I say? I don’t understand it.”
She’s well aware that if she was “populist” in her views, and a thorn in Mbeki’s side as a result, she would no doubt be a media darling today.
She’s “angry, very angry” at all that has been said of her.
“Because so much of what was said were lies,” she claims, in no uncertain terms.
However, she still declines to explain which part of the stories were true, and which were not.