Deputy President Mabuza incapable and unreliable to oversee the vaccine rollout plan

19 January 2021

The Democratic Alliance (DA) notes the appointment of Deputy President David Mabuza by President Cyril Ramaphosa to head up the inter-ministerial task team to oversee South Africa’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout plan.

We do not believe that Deputy President Mabuza is a competent and reliable figure to oversee this process as he has a history of failure in governance:

As Premier of Mpumalanga, Mabuza ran the province like his own personal fiefdom where corruption, political violence, and the complete collapse of the State is still a lasting legacy in the province.

He currently serves as the Chairperson of the Political Task Team on Eskom, a position in which has has failed dismally. South Africa is nowhere close to energy security since Mabuza has been brought on board, in fact we have been plunged further into darkness.

Mabuza has effectively been an absentee Deputy President since the beginning of Covid-19 crisis. While South Africans were looking to government to show leadership, Mabuza has been in hiding for the past 10 months.

It is, therefore, unconscionable that President Ramaphosa would entrust one of the most monumental tasks of South Africa’s democratic dispensation in the hands of a man who is not only allegedly corrupt but who is clearly incapable of overseeing a programme of this magnitude.

David Mazuba is simply not the right man for the job.

The fact that the President has made this move proves that South Africa’s Covid vaccine plan is now no longer about saving lives. It is about his political alliances within the ANC. This is evidenced by the fact that the President made this announcement via Zoom during the ANC’s Progressive Business Forum, as opposed to an announcement via the appropriate government channels in his capacity as the Head of State.

It is also unclear why, of all the people in the Executive, he would choose somebody who has not done an iota of work on this crisis. This is nothing more than ANC factional battles playing itself out.

The South African government has fundamentally failed the people of South Africa, by their own admission, in their bungling of this vaccine process. And the appointment of David Mabuza is yet another example of this government not prioritising the health and safety of its people.

Issued by Siviwe Gwarube, DA Shadow Minister of Health, 19 January 2021