Mahlangu holds up accountability torch by quitting

The health sector is about life and death. While practitioners in this sector take an oath to save lives, they know that patients can often die in their hands. My niece is an anaesthetist and has to put patients to sleep every day while they go under the knife. She obviously hopes they live to tell the tale of a successful operation, but death can strike. My sister is an oncologist and has to counsel patients and their families to prepare for the inevitable, induced by cancer.

I don’t know how many bodies they have had to encounter in their careers, even with the best intentions, skills and academic qualifications. I assume at medical school they were taught what to do to make sure that despite the frailty of life, they are able to put in place measures that will make a patient’s demise truly the worst-case scenario.

What happened to the mental health patients linked to Life Esidimeni is a tragedy.

Questions will always be raised whether — in a department headed by a qualified medical practitioner — everything they were taught at medical school about the preservation of life was done to avoid those 94 deaths occurring at such a rapid rate.

The assumption, until proven otherwise, must be that everyone did all they could to preserve life.

In that context, it is startling that Gauteng health MEC Qedani Mahlangu fell on her sword last week, taking political accountability for what medical practitioners in the employ of that department should have ensured did not happen. She could have advanced many arguments to stay and fix the situation instead of choosing the hard way — quitting her job. This kind of accountability — where one resigns out of moral conscience — is rare in our body politic. Usually, there is buck-passing, fingerpointing and obfuscation — seldom a readiness to fall on one’s sword at all.

After the Marikana tragedy, the police minister on whose watch this horror occurred was simply moved to another portfolio to carry on with life while his junior, Riah Phiyega, was thrown under the bus.

In the Esidimeni tragedy, the ombudsman has not pointed a finger at the premier and his executive council, who it appears knew of this disaster waiting to happen since at least October 2015, (according to Section 27’s Mark Heywood).

It does not seem possible that the premier and his executive learnt of this tragedy only recently. If that was the case, someone has been terribly negligent in not keeping an eye on this crucial, life-and-death portfolio.

So what has happened to the ANC slogan of collective responsibility in this case?

The health minister himself needs to take accountability too — he is after all responsible for appointing heads of departments in all provinces and has even been intimately involved in appointing the CEOs of state hospitals. So he cannot just dance away from it all and point a finger at the MEC.

He consults with the provincial MECs regularly in the ministers and members of executive councils meeting.

If such a body cannot pick up such a disaster is about to happen, it must disband as it is useless as a mechanism for monitoring and evaluation. It is chilling to learn that the Eastern Cape was also about to send patients out to the care of NGOs and was, thankfully, put off by the health ombudsman’s Esidimeni report.

This saga shows there is not yet a culture of thoroughgoing accountability in SA – we just don’t get it. So many people are focused on clinging to their jobs rather than doing the right thing.

By rights, half of the government and Parliament should have resigned over the Marikana massacre.

And, as for the president…. A fish rots from the head — everyone has learnt that you can get away with not falling on your sword. There are seldom any consequences.

You can tell those who want you gone that you will never leave of your own volition, regardless of the disaster you have caused or the cost to the country.

Mahlangu is no hero, but to her credit, when she realised the enormity of her error of judgment, she walked away from a R2m-a-year job, which is more than can be said for those around her who should be taking collective responsibility.