South Africa Health Minister’s job hanging by a thread. 

Johannesburg, Mar 1 – – South Africa’s Health Minister, Dr. Zweli Mkhize is currently embroiled in a corruption case involving the irregular awarding of a R82 million tender to a communications company which involves his former Personal Assistants (PAs).

According to the Daily Maverick which first broke the story, the communications company, Digital Vibes, was last year awarded with a COVID-19 tender by the Ministry because of Dr.Mkhize’s former PAs, Tahera Mather and Naadhira Mitha who are still his associates.

However, Dr. Mkhize has since said he welcomes the probe by the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) which is now probing the case. Last year, the Member of the Executive Council (MEC) of Health in the Gauteng province was relieved of his duties due to similar circumstances which might be the same fate if the SIU report finds irregularities in the procurement process of the tender.

Regardless, the Director-General of the Ministry of Health, Dr. Sandile Buthelezi has since called for calm citing that people should wait for the SIU report, “Digital Vibes was first appointed in 2019 to do some communications work that contract is still active and will end in March but we have since appointed auditors to look into this contract. We are cooperating with the SIU, we are appealing that we let the investigations to finish. Part of the investigation will look into why they were outsourced what was the motivation how was it awarded and how was it managed all of these are being looked into by the auditors and it shouldn’t take more than three weeks before we release the report of the investigations.

Moreover, it’s up to the investigators to justify on whether the contract was awarded accordingly. Let’s allow an objective view from the forensic auditors. However, I don’t want to comment much on the credentials of the company as it is currently under investigation but I am sure the company is legitimate and it’s registered as per the records I have seen it’s even registered with SARS and for me that’s legitimate enough. However, it’s a learning curve for us going forward on how we will award contracts in the mere future and we commend the work of the Daily Maverick in this exposé but the Minister is not involved in any procurement processes and the two people are not employed by the department so let’s allow the SIU to do a thorough investigation.”

Compile by:daniel.

Namibia daily news Correspondent.

Johannesburg.