DA on vaccine procurement: ‘Five minutes later there will be corruption’

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has announced that it will proceed with it court action to get the full details of the Covid-19 vaccine procurement and roll-out strategy from President Cyril Ramaphosa and Health Minister Zweli Mkhize.

This was confirmed on Wednesday by the party’s federal chair, Hellen Zille.

She said the party was concerned by the lack of transparency shown by the government so far which could lead to massive corruption if details of procurement are not disclosed.

“President Ramaphosa promised that there would be no corruption in particular with the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and of cause five minutes later there was headlines and revelations that there had been huge corruption in PPE’s and various connected politicians and their family members and other networks of the ANC enriching themselves massively as a middleman,” said Zille.

Ramaphosa earlier in the week said that the procurement and vaccine rollout strategy was going to be released only when the conclusions have been reached with suppliers.

He said South Africa was in no position to release the full details as it had signed a non-disclosure agreement.

“ We want to know… and South Africa has a right to know, who you are procuring from, how we are rolling out, and who is benefiting from that?” said Zille.

“We are asking the court to give an order to make sure that Cyril Ramaphosa answers the questions that our leader John Steenhuisen has put to him to which we had no answers yet.

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Zille said the party had lost all faith in the ANC-led government be able to manage any kind of procurement.

She also lambasted Ramaphosa’s critique of countries that had ordered excessive amounts of the vaccine and hoarding them.

“Billions are going to be spent on a vaccine that we only ordered just the other day…We didn’t order in time and now we are blaming everybody else because we didn’t get our act together.”

She said they have had enough with the President’s “empty promises.”

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