DARKLY PROPHETIC
The signal Mabuza is sending is clear: he doesn’t trust or care about his own country’s facilities
What does it say about your country when the deputy president, suffering from some or other ailment, rushes off to get treatment in foreign climes? What are we to make of David “DD”
Mabuza, the deputy president of our fine republic, and his frequent trips to Russia for medical treatment?
I will tell you what we should make of it. There is something so offensive and so darkly prophetic about Mabuza’s health holidays to Russia one feels nauseated just thinking about it.
The whole thing is offensive because he just needs to call any one of our fine hospitals and he would be helped — without the huge bills to him personally and to the state. Prophetic, because Mabuza is telling us something profound about our future: there isn’t one unless we can stop people like him from hollowing out our institutions, neglecting our facilities and creating a sense that excellence is only found elsewhere.
He is sending us all a signal. The same depressing signal that Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari sends his compatriots when he flies to London every few months for medical attention. The same signal that Robert Mugabe used to send his compatriots when he flew to Singapore every year for those Botox injections and other stimulants.
Mabuza is sending us the same message that his former best friend Jacob Zuma sent us when he rushed off to Russia to seek treatment after allegedly being poisoned. Zuma has in the past claimed he was poisoned because he led SA into Brics. Other reports have said he alleged that an estranged wife had put a bit of poison in his soup. A former jailbird claimed that political opponents put poison on his ox liver.
Ho hum. Who knows with Zuma? Anyway, away he flew to Putinland and then proclaimed a miraculous recovery.
It’s all rubbish. Listen to Mabuza, for example. He came back from his sojourn to Russia last week and told us that he had gone to that country because doctors there “understood” his ailment as they had been treating him for a long period.
He told News24: “When I was critically ill, unable to walk, I was presented to the hospital in Russia. They treated me and have all my medical records, so they know what might be the problem in the future.”
Oh really now. There are no facilities in SA to treat our own deputy president? Did Nelson Mandela have to travel to Russia or London or Washington for treatment?
The signal Mabuza is sending is clear: he doesn’t trust or care about his own country’s facilities.
What’s worse is that every week there is some horrific story coming out of a government hospital somewhere in SA. Mabuza, who wants to be president one day, should install himself at Steve Biko or Baragwanath or any one of our top hospitals and sample their wares. He would be surprised by how amazing, hard-working, dedicated and learned some of our doctors, nurses and medical staff are. He would be appalled by how horrific the conditions they have to work under can be.
Perhaps then he can gain some empathy with ordinary folk in Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape. Perhaps then he can begin to realise that SA needs political leaders who see the great possibilities for this country and not just a chance to accumulate wealth for themselves so that they can go and spend their loot in Dubai and elsewhere. Perhaps then he can have a proper and lucid engagement with the national health insurance debate.
What did we expect, though? This is a man who flew in a Gupta-owned Bombardier jet to Russia in 2015, but says he was so ill he cannot remember who was on board with him. Really, my brother? Pull the other one.
Mabuza should think long and hard about these overseas trips. Zambian president Michael Sata died of an “undisclosed illness” at King Edward VII’S Hospital in London in 2014. Far from home.