Three hundred and ten questions put to Ministers in parliament this year remain unanswered as of 1 December 2008. Sixteen were mine, including questioning of such matters as poor progress within SANAC, absent mechanisms in courts to deal with child victims of rape and the deteriorating state of South Africa's waters. 

The questions pointed to government failures in matters relating to the physical, emotional and environmental health of our country and were not answered by Ministers who clearly have no answers to our problems and have no intention of being held accountable. 

Aids infected, Aids deaths and Aids orphans are measured as a separate entity, but should not be viewed separately from other government policies that lack coherence or vision. AIDS must be tackled along with family cohesion, morality, sexual maturity and the general fitness of the population. Effective AIDS treatment is impossible without access to health care. The recommendations of the DBSA should have been implemented 14 years ago, when the IFP proposed them, with a streamlining of funding, and greater use of private health care funded by the state, for the 80% of the population treated in the public service.  

As an urgent measure government should place provincial health departments like the Free State and Kwa Zulu Natal under curatorship, to sort out their financial and management problems. In the long term, we need less dependence on conditional grants that get trapped in public works politics, more clarity about who is responsible for what with fewer unfunded mandates, less focus on co operative governance and more on provincial independence and accountability.

Only when legislative and verbal diarrhoea are replaced with integrated action, will the HIV rate decline. 

That action should include making HIV an ordinary illness stripped of special provisions for secrecy and one on one pre test counselling. Instead, more time should be spent tackling HIV holistically and promoting dialogue between the sexes and within the family, as regards both prevention and treatment. The focus on women in isolation, while viewing men as the problem, may be justified but only serves to make men more defensive.  

The politics of power has been played out. Visionary leaders must urgently apply their minds to practical solutions and show themselves to be accountable, rather than expend futile hours on rhetoric. Showing respect to MPs by answering parliamentary questions is a good place to begin. 

Contact: Dr Ruth Rabinowitz
082 579 3698