[Note the ever-present colonial mindset of the writer, who cannot help herself from using European fantasies of political life in Pretoria for the garbage title to her rotten article. Otis] Manto muscled out in palace coup Kerry Cullinan There has been a palace coup in the Health ministry while Minister Manto
Tshabalala-Msimang has been in hospital. Over the past three
weeks,Tshabalala-Msimang's deputy, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, and Deputy
President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka have seized control of the country's HIV/Aids
programme. Mlambo-Ngcuka has been quietly consulting the Treatment Action Campaign
and other civil society organisations over the past three months, in her role
as chairman of the South African National Aids Council (Sanac), which is
driving the development of a new HIV/Aids strategic plan for 2007 to 2011. The plan, to be released on World Aids Day on December 1, identifies a
range of targets to be achieved by 2011, including: Treating 650000 people with antiretroviral drugs; Distributing 500 million male condoms a year;
Promoting "mutual faithfulness" among sexually active people;
and
Reducing by 10% the number of children under 14 engaging in sex.
The plan also describes the lack of monitoring, evaluation and clear targets as "major weaknesses" of the previous plan, which was overseen by Tshabalala-Msimang. The old strategic plan expired last year but
the Department of Health failed to draw up a new one. While Madlala-Routledge said that she had not officially been given a new role, she said: "I think I have been given the space to support the improvement of relationships." 
The white racists in South Africa and their black lackeys, not one of
whom is worthy of polishing her desk, persist in their campaign to defame
the very good name and excellent mind of Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
Toronto was a catalyst and a turning point. It galvanised government to be on a new footing and to recognise that the atmosphere of perpetual conflict with civil society is not helping the fight against HIV," she said. TAC general-secretary Sipho Mthati described Tshabalala-Msimang as "tainted", saying it would be difficult for Aids organisations to trust her.
Meanwhile, Tshabalala-Msimang is convalescing at her home in Tshwane where few people have been allowed to visit her. — Health-e News Service
In response to the basura above that takes yellow journalism into a new dimension, YBYL can only
reprint a comment posted at NAR some months ago when this latest smear campaign
against the Minister began.
"A few words of truth concerning the very Hon. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
When I first was introduced to the Minister at the opening reception of
President Mbeki's AIDS Advisory Panel in 2000, the ice in her eyes and the
frost in her handshake made me think the tip of the Motherland had broken off
and was closing on the antarctic.
By the end of the Panel meetings a few weeks later, we were dancing Pata
Pata into the wee hours.
She is one of the most ferociously intelligent people I have ever met,
and certainly is unique in the public courage she displayed, and has maintained
despite the vicious and untrue attacks from many quarters, in turning 180
degrees because she actually attended to all that those remarkable meetings had
to offer.
She is my favorite person in South Africa. 8.21.2006 2:44pm
More words of truth, and the proof, that only the very best intellects question HIV/AIDS dogma is provided by Darin Brown in the post immediately following this, in which he introduces the readers of YBYL to the Serge Lang Memorial AIDS Archive at the AIDS Wiki - announced last month in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
The trouble with Kerry Cullinan’s claim in the Johannesburg Sunday Times this week that South African Health Minister Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has been ‘muscled out in palace coup’ is that it’s made up out of nothing. ‘Over the past three weeks, Tshabalala-Msimang's deputy, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, and Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka have seized control of the country's HIV/Aids programme,’ she alleged. But under the headline ‘Mlambo-Ngcuka denies HIV and Aids “coup”’, the Cape Times reported the following day: ‘The deputy president denied on Sunday that she and the deputy health minister were seeking to seize control of the country's HIV and Aids programme while Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is recovering from an illness. The Sunday Times reported this weekend that deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge had begun steering the country's HIV and Aids programme in a new direction since the health minister fell ill in early October. “I don't know where that story comes from,” Mlambo-Ngcuka said in an interview shortly after she addressed delegates to the international Jewish Catholic Liaison Commission meeting in Sea Point.’ As for Cullinan’s allegation that Deputy Health Minister Madlala-Routledge had ‘seized control of the country's HIV/Aids programme’, Deputy President Mlambo-Ngcuka added: ‘The minister of health is sick at the present moment, and the deputy minister continues to do the work that all deputy ministers do, and I don't think you should try and make this so dramatic.’
A formal statement issued from President Mbeki’s office on the same day, wired by the South African Press Association and posted by the Independent Online under the title ‘Manto still in charge of Aids programme’, refuted Cullinan’s miserable lies: ‘“Government wishes to clearly state that the work of the ministry and the department of health has not been altered or taken over,” said spokesperson Thabang Chiloane.’
The Treatment Information Group gave this tragically stupid woman the ‘Judith Miller Award for AIDS Journalism 2005’.
For her cocked-up piece in the Sunday Times this week, she’ll be vying to win it again in 2006 with another pitiful dimwit, her friend Tamar Kahn,whose offering in Business Day earlier this year elicited a letter of enquiry from me. She never answered.
Posted by: Anthony Brink | November 07, 2006 at 07:55 PM