The Eastern Cape deserves better

Here’s a suggestion for Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize: put Eastern Cape health MEC Sindiswa Gomba into one of her R100 000 “medical scooters” and have someone drive her off into the sunset of political obscurity.

Even by ANC standards of incompetence, Gomba is exceptional. Her department is a disaster – and its failings have been shown up by the Covid-19 crisis. Hospitals are filthy, medical staff are overworked and angry and there are shortages of virtually everything needed in a modern medical facility: from medicines to personal protective equipment for front-line staff.

Yet, this MEC spends her time blaming apartheid for the mess. MEC, please look at the calendar. The ANC has had 26 years – more than a full generation – to make a difference and hasn’t done so.

This week, it emerged that Gomba’s department’s incompetence – or, worryingly, its attempts at a cover-up – led to the nonreporting of hundreds of Covid-19 deaths, most from the Nelson Mandela Bay metro. This led to a jolting, sudden increase in the daily national death toll to 572 on Wednesday.

The failure to report these figures has a critical effect on how the progress of the coronavirus is tracked across SA. The omission of the numbers will have seriously skewed the forecasting needed for planning. Gomba, meanwhile, mutters about people being “held accountable”. MEC, those people are you.

Possibly, you may also drag down your director-general if you do the honourable thing by resigning and putting an end to your taking of taxpayers’ money under false pretences.

You both allowed all this to happen on your watch, so you really have no alternative but to go. Yet, maybe even beyond sacking this useless MEC, central government needs to step in and take over this entire basket-case province.

The Eastern Cape’s people deserve better.

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