podium without greeting them.
And she prefaced her remarks
by saying that she would not
answer any questions on land
and on President Zuma. That all
rather defeated the point of what
was meant to be a full and frank
exchange of views. “Most people
stayed,anditwasadeadlyboring,
dreary kind of speech,” said one
of the attendees.
SUCCESSESANDSCANDALS
As a minister, Dlamini-Zuma has
earned credit for standing up for
poor South Africans. As health
minister in the 1990s, she took on
thebigpharmaceuticalcompanies
and forced them to cut prices. Big
businesswasnotimpressed.That
kind of enmity is a political asset
in South Africa today.
Inaministerialcareerspanning
some 18 years and the portfolios
ofhealth,foreignaffairsandhome
affairs, she saw in the banning of
smoking in public places, the in-
troduction of free health care for
thepoor,andtheimplementation
ofagroundbreakingpeacedealin
theDemocraticRepublicofCongo
(DRC). Under her leadership,
home affairs got a clean audit for
the first time in 16 years.
Comparedtomanyofherrivals
forhighoffice,hercareerhasbeen
relatively scandal-free. The worst
blemisheswereearlyinhercareer.
Firstly, a playwright friend of hers
was awarded a R13m ($1m) con-
tract by the ministry of health in
which bidding procedures were
ignored. The job was to create an
AIDS awareness play,Sarafina II.
The play bombed,and activists
said some of its messages were
confusing, if not outright danger-
ous.Seenasaloyalcadre,Dlamini-Zuma,whowashealthministerat
the time, won the backing of her
fellow ANC comrades, and even
some kind words from Mandela.
Then came the Virodene scan-
dal.Thiswasadrug,championed
byDlamini-Zuma,whichitsdevel-
opers claimed would cure HIV/
AIDS. But South Africa’s medical
authorities refused to run tests
on it, and a committee from the
University of Pretoria and the
Gauteng health department said
it was a toxic industrial solvent.Again, senior ANC colleagues,
including then president Thabo
Mbeki, rallied behind Dlamini-
Zumawhennewsemergedthatthe
government had partly financed
the drug’s development.
Asforeignministerfrom1999to
2009, Dlamini-Zuma met further
hostilityfor herroleinsupporting
PresidentMbeki’squietdiplomacy
towards Zimbabwe’s President
Robert Mugabe. And again, as
chairwomanofthe AfricanUnion
(AU) Commission from 2012 to
2016, Dlamini-Zuma’s diplomat-
ic style came under fire. She was
accused of staying away from
trouble spots, avoiding war zones
and failing to act quickly to help
contain the spread of the deadly
Ebola virus in West Africa.STRUGGLESATTHEAU
Lively and animated in small
groups, Dlamini-Zuma’s speech-
ifyingoftenplumbednewdepthsof
tedium,evenbythelowstandards
ofinternationalorganisations.Her
argument that it should be doing
more to tackle the root causes of
conflicts–structuralinequalityand
poorgovernance–wasnotalways
wellreceivedattheorganisation’s
headquarters in Addis Ababa.As a health minister under
fire, Dlamini-Zuma was firmly
backed by ANC colleaguesROGANWARD/REUTERS37