NDZ’s ego getting in way of progress

What is the price of a colossal ego? Judging by the court battle being fought by lockdown minister Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma against tobacco products, then it is around R7.5 million … and counting.

Dlamini-Zuma is holding on to her “science” and to her principles as tightly as her former husband does to his proclaimed innocence – and both are employing Stalingrad defence tactics in fighting, legally speaking, house to house until the last bullet is expended.

And the minister’s campaign is being funded by taxpayers … the same taxpayers who are going to have to fork out, in some way or other, for the R1 billion a month in lost excise revenue because of the ongoing ban on the sale of smokes. Dlamini-Zuma ignores repeated research which shows there is no cast-in-stone science indicating the ban will either reduce the transmission of coronavirus or mitigate the effects of Covid-19, the disease it causes.

What is worrying is that the minister is also responsible for implementing new governance paradigms and she has already shown that she will guide the ANC’s programme to micromanage provinces and municipalities, even successful ones. Worryingly, a dogmatic ego is the enemy of real progress.

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