First in the land shouldn’t always mean first in line
Remember Yiannis Avranas? He was captain of the Oceanos, a passenger liner that sank off Coffee Bay in 1991. He was first off the ship, saying he needed to organise the rescue from helicopters flying about his boat. “When I order abandon the ship, it doesn’t matter what time I leave,” he later told an inquiry into his behaviour. “Abandon is for everybody. If some people like to stay, they can stay.”
I couldn’t help thinking, watching President Cyril Ramaphosa get the second Covid-19 vaccination in SA last Wednesday, that he should have waited longer. My dad served in the Royal Navy during World War 2 and I was brought up to believe that captains stay with their ships.
Imagine the message of leadership the president would have won for himself had he declared that neither he nor any member of his cabinet would accept a vaccination until the whole country had been vaccinated.
He is a decent enough man and I am sure it crossed his mind, but his cabinet would have revolted. Politicians expect special treatment. In fact, Business Day had a terrific story on its front page the next day, saying the department of health had prepared a plan to vaccinate not only the president and his deputy but other ministers, provincial leaders and union leaders too.
It was quashed by the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority, for whom I have suddenly developed a healthy respect. But the politicians will soon get around the Sahpra protocols. They would already have been told they were in line and they will be angry.
I understand the argument for the leader to get vaccines early. It is designed to set an example to doubters. But beyond a few nutters saying they will not be vaccinated, there’s only much contested evidence to suggest the average citizen is vaccineresistant.
And even if there were evidence, it takes a mind marinated in bureaucracy to assume that the most loved and influential figure in a democracy is its political leader. In Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has just has his second injection. Donald Trump was quick to grab a jab as was Joe Biden.
I genuinely don’t begrudge the president his jab, but you have to ask yourself what happens to vaccine procurement and distribution here when the politicians who control its every facet are suddenly all safely inoculated. I’d much rather have a government of people as desperate for a vaccine as I am.
If the president must do things first, let him start the annual tax declaration season, with full transparency. Or, if it has to be health-related, an regular prostate examination.
You have to ask what happens to vaccine procurement when the politicians are all safely inoculated
Ididn’t know, until I used it in an article about the ANC and again in regard to the premier of the Eastern Cape, Oscar Mabuyane, that the word “useless” really annoys people. A life of being called names must have blunted my sensitivities.
Earlier this year I wrote that Mabuyane was so useless, he had retained his provincial health minister despite her having ordered motorcycles with bed-like sidecars to be used as ambulances during the first Covid-19 crisis.
So irritated was the premier that he had his spokesperson, Mvusiwekhaya Sicwetsha, write an article criticising me, which piece actually became the op-ed lead in this fine newspaper on January 10.
“The matter of the procurement of motorcycles that were to distribute chronic medication to the homes of people with co-morbidities so they don’t have to visit hospitals and clinics to collect their medication … is under investigation,” he wrote. How easily the lies flow. Fortunately, Mabuyane found his courage the other day and fired his health MEC, Sindiswa Gomba, who faces many years now in the wilderness, with the law on her tail.
I’m not sure whether she was fired for wasting money on the motorcycles, but while he’s in a firing mood the premier might ask himself whether a spokesperson who can turn that thing in the photo here into a delivery vehicle for medicines is really worth his salary.