EFF leader Julius Malema fancies himself an expert on Covid-19, and the pharmaceuticals developed to fight it.
How else does one make sense of his demand that the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra) approve two particular drugs from Russia and China respectively?
And to make the point, the EFF and its supporters will march to the offices of Sahpra to demand that China’s Sinovac vaccine and Russia’s Sputnik be given the green light.
In an interview, Malema said: “The handling of these vaccine programmes has been one mess after another, and it is very clear there is no programme by the government to vaccinate our people.”
Perhaps someone should tell Malema that while South Africa has indeed delved the depths of ineptitude, we have still not reached the level of Banana Republic where pharmaceuticals are approved on the whim of politicians.
Amid the third wave of the Covid19 pandemic, where the seven-day average of new infections is just under 12 000 cases, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration has come under rightful criticism over the ham-fisted way in which it has administered the available vaccines.
Truth be told, South Africa, like the rest of the world, was always going to be dependent on Big Pharma, which has an advantage in research and development.
Once vaccines developed in America and the UK, after rigorous testing, were proved to be effective the demand for them shot up. Juxtapose that with Russia, China and Cuba, which have developed their Covid-19 vaccines under a veil of secrecy.
It is for this reason that Sahpra had to issue a press statement on Monday – although it chose to be diplomatic in its wording – over the delays in the approval of the Chinese and Russian vaccines.
Malema’s demands has echos of the Virodene scandal of the late 1990s, where a patently unsafe drug was heralded by some ANC politicians as an “Aids cure” before it had been subjected to any form of scientific testing. In a year of local government elections, Malema’s political instincts might be spot-on, but they should not come at the expense of lives.
The Star