CABINET POST FOR MANTO?
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6 August 2002
Nyamandhlovu, Tuesday From Wellness Makwakwa, Medical Reporter
It is rumoured here that His Excellency the President, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, is planning to offer South Africa's Minister of Health, Ms Manto Tshabala-Msimang, a post in his cabinet.
Observers will know that Ms Tshabalala-Msimang has spent the last couple of years fighting to prevent Nevirapine from becoming generally available to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the HIV virus. Having lost three court battles in a row, she is now taking a new angle, and seeking to have the drug outlawed, so that she won't have to comply with the Court Order requiring her to provide it.
President Mugabe has recognised a particular talent here, along with the guts and determination to keep on fighting. He reckons that if Manto was put in charge of health in Zimbabwe, it would solve the political problem, in that the entire electorate would soon be dead, and he wouldn't have to bother about those pesky elections any more.
It would also solve the famine problem, because there would be no one left to feed.