OPINION: Health Minister Zweli Mkhize should take political responsibility and abide by the ANC’s step-aside protocol over tenders dished out to friends and comrades, writes Marlan Padayachee.
Durban: During the colourful pomp and ceremony decked out to visiting French President Emmanuel Macron, his host President Cyril Ramaphosa paraded his Cabinet ministers – including his under-fire Health Minister Dr Zweli Lawrence Mkhize, who side-stepped being quizzed by the media about how his close comrades and friends picked up a whopping R150-million Covid-19 and National Health Insurance irregular procurement deal.
As the high-profile line minister in charge of the nation’s 55-million population’s health safety and security and vaccination roll-out service delivery, ZL Mkhize, once the toast of politics in his hometown of Pietermaritzburg, has been pushed into a tight corner over his close links to Tahera Mather and Naadira Mitha, directors of Digital Vibes, an obscure communications and public relations agency from KwaZulu-Natal.
The latest revelations also places the minister’s wife, also a medical doctor, May Mkhize, at the heart of this burning issue, in which there are allegations backed by transactions documents that Digital Vibes apparently paid an electrical contractor R7 000 for repair work to the couple’s posh home in Bryanston, Johannesburg, and bankrolled their son to the tune of R300 000.
The Special Investigating Unit is to release its probe into the matter – now at an advanced stage in June.
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