Lionel Mtshali: ‘Blue-light’ premier who defied Mbeki on Aids drugs
1935-2015
LIONEL Mtshali, who has died in Durban at the age of 80, won international acclaim when he openly defied president Thabo Mbeki’s murderous HIV/Aids “policy” that prevented the distribution of the anti-Aids drug nevirapine to HIV-positive pregnant women.
As a result of this policy, at least 70 000 children were being born HIV-positive in South Africa every year.
Mtshali was the IFP premier of KwaZulu-Natal in February 2002 when he overruled his ANC health MEC, Zweli Mkhize, and announced that enough was enough.
“We shall not wait one day longer, nor allow any space for further excuses, delaying tactics or preposterous theory which may get in the way of saving our children,” he said in a two-page public statement.
“I have turned upside down the scientific facts to find a reason which can justify the failure to act and ameliorate the suffering and reduce the death of so many of our children and I have found none.”
Stating that he would not have “another 20 000 HIV-plus children who could have been saved on my conscience”, he announced that KwaZulu-Natal would begin rolling out the drug immediately in defiance of government policy.
The Western Cape had begun doing this in 1999, but with his statement Mtshali became the highest-profile South African politician to support a growing campaign against the national government’s policy of restricting the distribution of Aids drugs in public clinics and hospitals.
He was the subject of an arsupport
‘UNLIKELY RENEGADE’: Former IFP premier Lionel Mtshali ticle in the New York Times, which described as an “unlikely renegade” this “courtly, balding man who sips tea from gilded teacups and favours sober suits and measured words”.
He told the New York Times he was weary of visiting rural villages and hearing constituents beg for help he could not give, and of feeling helpless when he stood among mourners at family funerals.
He himself had recently lost two young family members to Aids, he said.
Mtshali defied the government again when he testified in of a court application brought by the Treatment Action Campaign to compel the government to provide nevirapine. The government, recognising the major publicity value his testimony would have and supported by Mkhize, went to court to prevent him from testifying, but lost.
In his testimony Mtshali said KwaZulu-Natal faced a “calamitous” HIV/Aids pandemic with an estimated infection rate of 35%. He said he regarded the “urgent and immediate administration of nevirapine [as] a moral imperative of government”.
In July 2002, the Constitutional Court ordered the government to make nevirapine available without delay.
Mtshali was born on November 7 1935. After studying at the University of Zululand and Rhodes University in Grahamstown, he obtained a master’s degree in education at the University of the Free State. From 1960, he worked as a teacher, school principal, school inspector and chief school inspector before becoming a member of the KwaZulu-Natal legislative assembly in 1990.
He became a member of the National Assembly in 1994 and an ineffectual minister of arts, culture, science and technology in the Mandela-led government of national unity in 1996.
His respected director-general, Roger Jardine, resigned amid allegations that Mtshali was pushing an IFP political agenda in the department. There was particular unhappiness over the cash-strapped department’s expenditure of R2.5-million on a memorial to fallen Zulu warriors in the 1838 Battle of Blood River, and a further R800 000 on a feast to mark the unveiling of the memorial.
In 1999, he replaced Ben Ngubane as premier of KwaZulu-Natal. Mtshali was extremely close to IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who spent much of his time in Cape Town as minister of home affairs and, it was believed, wanted his own man running the show for him in KwaZulu-Natal.
Gruff, taciturn and unapproachable, Mtshali had an autocratic and imperial style that caused serious divisions in what had been a fairly stable coalition government.
Against strong resistance from his ANC and DA coalition partners, he announced that all government business would be conducted in Ulundi, unilaterally making the IFP stronghold the de facto capital of the province at vast inconvenience to his ministers and exorbitant cost to taxpayers.
This was in spite of the fact that the legislature was in Pietermaritzburg and the provincial government building (where he reportedly had his own private lift) was in Durban.
Mtshali himself lived in Durban and commuted with his bodyguards almost daily, at a cost to taxpayers of R12 000 per
POWER OF THE PEN: How Margaret Smith reported on her detention trip, to Ulundi in the province’s R30-million eight-seater Lear jet, which he treated as his own and used for both official and private purposes.
On one occasion he spent R24 000 of taxpayers’ money flying between Ulundi and Durban on two successive days to watch a theatre production of Jesus’ crucifixion, twice.
He frequently flew between Durban and Pietermaritzburg, a 40-minute trip by road. And then his blue-light motorcade would bring traffic in the city to a halt as it screamed from the airport to the legislature.
He refused to live in his luxurious official residence in
We shall not . . . allow any space for preposterous theory which may get in the way of saving our children
Ulundi in spite of, on one celebrated occasion, R2-million being spent on security there. In the same tax year, R400 000 was spent on security at his home in Durban.
The IFP lost its majority to the ANC in 2004. Two years later Mtshali launched a blistering attack on the ANC for problems he himself had signally failed to address.
Half the municipalities were dysfunctional, he said, and councils had failed to collect billions of rands owed to them in arrears.
Mtshali is survived by his wife, Daphne, and four children. — Chris Barron