I have been reflecting on the challenges President Ramaphosa faces in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and his struggle to match the need to consult widely and the need to take decisive decisions that have and will affect the lives of so many. Leadership, irrespective of position, requires the ability to motivate people and take an organisation in a given direction possibly different from that which it had previously taken. Management on the other hand involves systems and processes that allows an organisation to function efficiently and achieve its goals and objectives. Both expect those involved to act in an ethical and honest manner. This lead me to think about…
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COVID-19 and Corruption
On 23rd July 2020 I wrote an unknowingly prophetic piece on the Cancer of Corruption in Health. In that I used examples of corruption in the health sector that I had encountered in the past. In doing so, I had no idea that the cancer that I had described and which I concluded could be excised by good and honest leadership had progressed to such an advanced stage in South African society. At a time of crisis, with the country threatened on many fronts by an unprecedented pandemic, one would have assumed that even the most hardened criminal would have hesitated to steal the scarce resources needed to save the…
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The Cancer of Corruption in Health
Corruption is a word that has become all too familiar in the lexicon of the ordinary South African. Billions rands of government funds have ended up in the hands of corrupt individuals many of whom by virtue of their positions should have been people with integrity and above reproach. Transparency International reports that the Corruption Perceptions Index places the country at 71 out of the 180 countries. The 2017 Corruption Watch annual report quotes the then Economic Development Minister as estimating that corruption costs the public sector at least R27 billion annually. During my initial experience heading the Free State health Department in the late 1990’s I uncovered corruption at…
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Groupthink … in a COVID-19 world
Groupthink is a pattern of thought characterised by forced manufacture of consent and conformity to group values and ethics. The concept originates from the work of a social psychologist, Professor Irvin Janis, who coined the term in 1972. In groupthink groups of highly intelligent people at times make poor decisions when insulated from the divergent opinions of people outside the group. Under these circumstances a person within the group, although holding an alternative view, will withhold that view to appear to remain part of the group, while the group will reject an alternative view originating from outside the group. There are many examples of this and its negative consequences within…
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Choices … to be or not to be?
We all face choices in life, some important and some trivial. A career choice or what to wear on a particular day for instance. With a libertarian approach to life I become uncomfortable when the space within which I can exercise my freedom to choose is limited. I accept that clearly there are situations in life where restricting the freedom of an individual to choose is justified and indeed essential. Life under a COVID-19 lockdown that has now extended well beyond 100 days, has resulted in significant limitations of the freedom of choice for the citizens of this country. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, like governments across the globe,…
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What is advice? … in the context of COVID-19
The challenges faced by countries and their governments to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic are formidable and in many countries there has been conflict and disagreement between the government of the day i.e. politicians and the experts i.e scientists and researchers. The United States is a glaring example of this scenario at its worst. There has even been conflict between public health experts and epidemiologists on the validity of various strategies to contain the spread of the virus with probably the most well documented example being that between the expert advice given to governments in the United Kingdom and Sweden. As in most things in life the final verdict on…
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The time is now for change!
I trust also that the reader will agree that given my background, which I will elaborate on elsewhere on this website, I have no desire to make political capital out of any comments in this regard. So what is my assessment of the position South Africa finds itself after 100 plus days of varying degrees of “lockdown”? As I write Gauteng has for the first time the greatest number of positive COVID-19 coronavirus tests in any province as well as having the largest number of active case of any province. This is a trajectory that is closely followed by the Eastern Cape. The Western Cape long designated as the “epicentre” of the…
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Winter of discontent …
I live in Cape Town where the last few days have been cold and windswept … bleak or bucolic could be other adjectives to describe the weather but also the psyche of the nation. We have lived through over 100 days of varying restrictions euphemistically termed “Alert levels” determined by a Command Council of politicians, we are again subject to power outages euphemistically terms “Load shedding” rather than power failures defined according to various “levels” of severity, today it is level 2 and finally here in the Western Cape while the rains pours down there are water restrictions at “level 3”. It seems to me we are a country of…
