The reasons provided by the Minister of Health, Zweli Mkhize, for why the central government will be solely responsible for the procurement and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines are no more than a feeble attempt to disguise the ANC’s megalomania and in addition, they are juridically and constitutionally flawed.
The ANC has demonstrated time and again that it is too incompetent and corrupt to be trusted with the management of a project of this magnitude and thus, province’s – like the Western Cape – as well as private institutions must be involved in the administration of the countrywide vaccine programme so that the people who want to get the vaccine do not have to wait for it.
According to Mkhize, large health companies “prefer” to work with the central government and he also expressed that it would be logistically impossible for the provinces to handle the vaccinations.
This lack of faith in province’s abilities is a damning admission by the ANC that the provinces under its rule are incompetent.
In the FF Plus’s view, provinces that are able to do so must be allowed to immediately launch the programme.
If that were the case, the FF Plus would request the Western Cape provincial government to import the vaccines at once so that people can exercise their right to be vaccinated if they wish to do so.
When he announced the relief package of more than R500 billion last year, President Cyril Ramaphosa himself assured the people that fraud and corruption would not take place.
But today, it is general knowledge that extensive fraud and corruption did indeed occur on a massive scale. Thus, any assurances by the government that it will not happen again mean nothing.
The only way to avoid as much criminality with the programme as possible is to decentralise the process and to involve the private sector.
Read the original article in Afrikaans by Dr Corné Mulder on FF Plus
