BBK Unplugged

You’re out of order, Comrade MEC

● When one looks at and listens to Bandile Masuku, an impressive impression of the man is imprinted.

Level-headed, caring, soft-spoken and a decent human being.

Those are the kind of character traits that should embody the persona of a member of the executive committee for health.

But when a video of pregnant women sprawled on the floor of an overcrowded ward at the Mamelodi Hospital went viral on social media, that image changed.

It exposed something that goes against the grain of one of the core principles espoused by Batho Pele, which is treating citizens with courtesy and consideration.

To have overcrowding in a hospital ward during a time that government is championing a campaign of social distancing, when the country and the world grapple the coronavirus pandemic crisis, must have cast the virus as a mosquito in a nudist camp.

The video landed in the hands of the eNCA journalist Zikhona Tshona. She contacted Masuku, the Gauteng health MEC, to solicit a response.

When he was informed of the inhumane conditions, the mask of care fell off

Masuku’s face.

What followed was a horror show as Masuku mindlessly displayed disdain of the very people he and his department should be treating with deference.

In the exchange with Tshona, Masuku lost his marbles. He arrogantly argued something to the effect that whoever took the video should have gone home after delivering their baby. And this is a polite paraphrase.

Can you spell cold?

Can you spell callous?

Can you spell uncouth?

It boggles the mind why Masuku felt it fit for purpose to give the initial response.

He presides over a provincial public health system littered with sickening examples of ill-treatment of patients.

You would have thought that Masuku’s intuition should have been that of circumspection.

Mind you, this is the same institution where not long ago — last May to be specific — a 76-year-old woman, Martha Marais, was found tied to a bench in the waiting area.

Images of her wailing are still haunting as her daughter demanded answers from the authorities.

Yet, when confronted with an even bigger misdeed from the same facility, Masuku instinctively let loose a volley of verbal diarrhoea.

When the short distance between his brain and his mouth reconnected and Masuku saw the folly of his ways, he trotted on the tiring, well-beaten, predictable path.

He turned around to offer an apology.

Hopefully, one of these days these young, hip and happening comrades from whose dictionaries the word principled appears to have been omitted will realise that this tried and tired trick has lost its elasticity, not to mention its authenticity.

Can you spell fake humility?

It is true that man is erratic by nature and to err is human.

In the same vein, it is poor form for people in power to make a monumental mess, apologise and expect life to continue while they trample on the lives of others.

They don’t seem to learn from the mistakes of others.

It is like this gang is on an unthinking enthusiastic warfare to outdo the blunder of the other.

From travelling to Geneva (nèe Switzerland).

From suffering severe hunger pangs so much so that you drive to Fourways to have lunch with a friend, flagrantly flouting lockdown regulations in the process.

From leaking lockdown extension, denying doing so and still seeing reason to open a case in a Sandton cop shop.

This bunch is special.

But I guess hosting a press conference on the road to celebrate a reduction of fatalities during the Easter period, when there was almost no one on the road, which is why you have a presser on the road, means our colourful characters can have their cake and eat it.

The blue-lights effect has an adverse impact on these souls and makes this lot toxic. It leaves one gobsmacked by the gimmicks of the governing when dealing with the governed.

And so it is that with that act of irrationality, Masuku has made himself a graduate of the Qedani Masuku university of to hell with you, I am the health MEC. What an impression.

He presides over a public health system littered with ... illtreatment of patients