Good riddance, Dr. Dlamini-Zuma

For Africa to rise and realise it's vision, such a responsibility can not be in the hands of one individual. All challenges mentioned were there before her, and they will continue so long as we take a passive attitude and be quick on finding fault. We all have to be ready ti pull in the same direction; not leaders who put their interest ahead of others. Only then we can create a better Africa for all.

This is sad. She remains one of the few powerful leaders I respect. She took this leadership position at the prime of her competency and she meant to do well. Something must have prevented her to deliver....I look forward to read her exit report.

This article is quite biased. The issues that Dr Zuma is accused of neglecting have been an African reality for decades now; security issues, rogue presidents, unrest, war as well as heightened vulnerability to health issues. Speaking of Ebola, the World Health Organisation faced a nightmarish situation containing it in Africa because of dysfunctional and almost non- existent health systems. Africa has a legacy of being dysfunctional and every country contributes in some way to the overall continental dysfunction. Most of these problems will outlive our great great grand- children. Dr Zuma couldn't have fixed them in 4 years. I for one remain proud of her

The article talks of this woman's "stellar public service" - it seems they are ignore her role in the Sarafina 2 debacle. She is part of the ANC and that speaks volumes! Look at the state of South Africa after two decades of ANC mismanagement - does Africa want or need that?

It is true that all these challenges have always been there; and it is true that Dlamini-Zuma is a part of a collective of leaders. But that misses the point. What I see as the point of the article is Dlamini-Zuma's absence at each of those crises.

I want to believe that, she took up the job knowing its challenges. Africa 2063 provided a platform for majority of Africans to map up a future Africa, got them involved in understanding what an integrated Africa which is at peace with itself is. A role of that magnitude cannot be shouldered by one woman! it is a biased article that only serves to reflect on the negatives. If it is indeed good ridden, why did they struggle to replace her, she is serving an extended period, is it not?

Iyoo! this is way too bias. Africa has a vision for the next 50 years, the African Agenda 2063. The Task of such magnitude cannot rest on the shoulders of one woman, surrounded by men who have not sobered up to democratic governance. The blame cannot solely rest on one individual

Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma did what was possible with resources and support available. Fixing Africa is an act of all Africa. Apportioning blame of failure of AU Commission on Dr Dlamini-Zuma is a subversion of truth.

Let’s start with her role as health minister in the first democratic government. Dlamini-Zuma, a qualified medical doctor, was faced with a massive and unenviable challenge in formulating health systems for nine new provincial structures.
“It is perhaps understandable, then, that in the first few years of the new government the health minister neglected to consult with civil society,” academic Nicoli Nattrass writes in Mortal Combat: AIDS Denialism and the Struggle for Antiretrovirals in South Africa (2007). “However, the cost of this was poor policy decision making and exposure to angry protests from civil society, as she discovered during the Sarafina II scandal of 1996.”
The Sarafina II scandal saw European Union funding to the tune of R14,27-million channelled to playwright Mbongeni Ngema after he won a contract to write a play about Aids. As a result of concern from opposition parties over the amount being spent on a single play, the matter was referred to the public protector for investigation. The public protector’s report found that the expenditure was unauthorised, the initiative mismanaged and that both Dlamini-Zuma and her department’s director-general, Olive Shisana, had misled Parliament and the media.
As major a scandal as this was in its time, it was overshadowed the following year by the Virodene scandal – in which Dlamini-Zuma played a pivotal role.
When two scientists approached the health minister in 1997 and informed her that they were conducting an unofficial trial on Aids patients using an antifreeze solution they called Virodene, Dlamini-Zuma was sufficiently impressed to invite them to present their findings to Cabinet. This was a blatant breach of the protocol which says medicines have to go through the processes of the Medical Research Council (MRC), on which Dlamini-Zuma had previously worked.
The MRC subsequently identified a range of problems with the Virodene trial and ordered it to cease. Dlamini-Zuma’s response was to initiate a 'review team' to evaluate the MRC, which recommended that the MRC itself should cease to exist.
In the absence of permission from the MRC, however, Virodene had to be tested outside the country, with financial help from the ANC. “No evidence of its effectiveness has ever been published,” writes Nattrass.
In 1998 Dlamini-Zuma was also responsible for suspending pilot projects testing the use of antiretrovirals to prevent mother-to-child-transmission, claiming that they were “unaffordable”. Eastern Cape doctor (and Pan Africanist Congress health secretary) Costa Gazi was subsequently fined for slander after suggesting that Dlamini-Zuma be tried for manslaughter for not supporting the provision of the drugs to HIV-positive mothers.
“[Dlamini-Zuma] came in with very good intent,” Section27’s Mark Heywood told Daily Maverick on Tuesday. “The area where she struck her greatest success was in the anti-smoking regulations she introduced.” (Dlamini-Zuma introduced new laws to crack down on smoking in public.) Heywood added that she put in place some important legislative reform, but didn’t always see the policies through.
Summing up her performance, Heywood said: “I would give her a 4/10, to be honest. But she was in a difficult period. Being the first health minister was never going to be easy.”
What about Dlamini-Zuma’s stint as foreign affairs minister, a position she held for a decade?
Supporters point to the role Dlamini-Zuma played in helping broker peace deals in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But there are other less positive aspects of her tenure.
Earlier this year, Dlamini-Zuma was implicated in the payment of $10-million to the infamous 2010 Fifa World Cup Diaspora Legacy Programme. A December 2007 letter sent by Danny Jordaan to Fifa states that Jordaan “had a discussion with the minister of foreign affairs, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma”, who said the funds should be paid over.
But perhaps more damning is the notion that Dlamini-Zuma’s time as foreign minister took a strategic form that is hard to discern at all.
“The conventional wisdom is that it's one of those areas where you have to think long term,” University of Cape Town politics professor Anthony Butler told the Daily Maverick.
“Under [Jacob] Zuma, you had a clear change of direction. You can disagree with it, but you can see what it is: developing strategic south-south partnerships and so on. It wasn't clear what Dlamini-Zuma's strategy was, other than following Mbeki's [African Renaissance] project."
When it comes to Dlamini-Zuma’s time at the Home Affairs ministry, surely we’re on safer ground. After all, it was under Dlamini-Zuma’s stewardship that Home Affairs received its first clean audit. The 'turnaround' of Home Affairs was trumpeted and celebrated.
There is a fair amount of evidence to suggest, however, that Dlamini-Zuma profited from incremental work which started long before she took office – and that she benefited from extremely dedicated and talented department director-generals whose time at Home Affairs began years before hers. In particular, Mavuso Msimang should be credited with much of the clean-up. As early as 2007, two years before Dlamini-Zuma became minister, Msimang was being hailed as “Home Affairs’ turnaround man”.
Said Butler: "There have been studies on the Home Affairs turnaround. They showed these painstaking reforms introduced with huge teams of consultants. But after a year of Dlamini-Zuma in the job, people started claiming she'd fixed it."
Considered from these angles, Dlamini-Zuma’s work in government begins to look substantially less rosy than the way it is currently being painted. In this respect, she has certainly benefited from being out of government politics for the past three years, in a country with a short collective memory. Now, Dlamini-Zuma is able to return from the AU as a venerated elder stateswoman.
I quote from an article written by REBECCA DAVISof the Daily Maverick... "The AU role has taken her out of local politics, to come back with acquired seniority,” said Butler: a kind of seniority and mystique she might have struggled to attain if she had carried on in ministerial roles. “The one thing that can give her that seniority is pan-Africanism."
Many of us would be thrilled if South Africa were to be led by its first female president. But does Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s political history suggest she is the right woman for that job?