Mabuza's leadership on the vaccine rollout does not inspire confidence, says Herman Mashaba

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba has taken a jab at Deputy President David Mabuza, after his appointment to oversee the Covid-19 vaccine procurement and distribution in SA.

Mabuza's appointment was announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa this week at a webinar organised by the ANC’s Progressive Business Forum. It comes as the country is set to receive the first million doses of the vaccine later this month.

Ramaphosa said Mabuza will spearhead the government’s interministerial team tasked with the vaccine rollout.

“The strategy has already been developed but the IMC [interministerial committee] will be dealing with the actual mechanics of ensuring the whole process of vaccination is well done,” said Ramaphosa.

In a statement, Mashaba described Mabuza's appointment as a “plan for the blind to lead the blind”.

He added that Mabuza was the wrong man for the job and his appointment does not inspire confidence.

“Mabuza has been responsible for chairing the task team to turn around Eskom for the past two years. We're still tweeting from the dark,” said Mashaba.

“The announcement of his leadership on the vaccine rollout, while South Africans look set to deal with months of load-shedding, does not inspire confidence.”

Mashaba said he was concerned about the lack of information about experts in the fields of finance, vaccinology, transport and logistics, operations and various other fields that would be invaluable to the work of such a task team.

“The few things we know for sure as a country is that our government has no plan, is lying to us repeatedly about their actions and that many South Africans will die as a result of this,” he said.

Mashaba said he believes that the best move the government could make is to appoint a team of the “brightest minds in our country to spearhead the vaccination efforts and for politicians to stay out of the way”.

“With our economy in crisis and our health-care system overwhelmed, we cannot afford the kind of incompetence and corruption in the vaccination effort as we have seen throughout government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said.