Buthelezi fires back at ANC ‘imbecility’ as KZN unity government tensions flare:
n a withering response to the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal, IFP cooperative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) MEC Thulasizwe Buthelezi on Monday dismissed accusations made by the ANC earlier in the day as “the highest form of political imbecility and tactical opportunism”.
His statement comes after ANC provincial chair Siboniso Duma, provincial secretary Bheki Mtolo and deputy ANC KZN chair Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu openly criticised Buthelezi at a press briefing, accusing him of divisiveness within the government of provincial unity (GPU) and taking politically motivated actions against traditional leaders and ANC-run municipalities.
In a strongly-worded statement, Buthelezi said he served at the behest of premier Thamsanqa Ntuli and not the ANC.
He pushed back on what he said was an attempt to paint him as a “weak link” within the unity government, calling it a tactic aimed at undermining his influence.
“I do not take my marching orders from the ANC,” Buthelezi said.
He characterised the ANC’s comments as attempts to isolate him from the IFP, suggesting that they stem from the party’s discomfort with its significant loss in the province following the May 29 elections.
“The ANC needs to come to terms with their dramatic loss of power,” he said, referencing the party’s decline in influence following years of governance that he claimed had led to “the collapse of governance and service delivery” in KwaZulu-Natal.
Buthelezi said that ANC leaders were engaged in a coordinated effort to undermine his work as Cogta MEC and as the traditional prime minister of the Zulu nation.
“None of these tactics by the ANC will intimidate me nor deter me from executing my responsibilities as an MEC serving under an IFP Premier,” he declared.
Buthelezi also issued a strong rebuke of the ANC’s governance record, particularly within provincial Cogta during the previous administration.
He accused the ANC of fostering an environment rife with “corruption and malfeasance” and said that he would not shield any misconduct of his predecessors.
“I will not mollycoddle the corruption and malfeasance that was the order of the day in the Cogta department in the sixth administration.”
During its media briefing on Monday marking 100 days of the provincial unity government, Duma called Buthelezi “divisive” and the Democratic Alliance uncooperative.
He said that ANC officials had received complaints from traditional leaders about Buthelezi’s conduct, which they believed was politically motivated.
“Ours is to defend the hegemony of Izinduna,” Duma said.
Further allegations against Buthelezi involved the termination of contracts for workers associated with the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP), reportedly at his direction.
Duma said that Buthelezi’s actions were out of sync with the GNU’s goals, and risked alienating workers and traditional leaders who were instrumental in maintaining rural support.
“Buthelezi believes that he is above the GNU and his political party, the IFP. He is very divisive in nature. And his mission is to take us backward,” Duma said.
Despite all of this, Duma said the coalition government would continue to serve KZN residents for the next five years.
At the same media briefing, Simelane-Zulu said there were “no tensions” in the unity government, and that the ANC worked well with the IFP leadership, but that Buthelezi was a “rotten potato”.
Since Buthelezi was appointed an MEC, he had used his position to “settle scores”, she said, by ensuring that he “goes after” ANC run municipalities in the province.
She said the ANC would not accept Buthelezi’s actions and was engaging IFP leadership on the matter.
Former Trump official and sex abstinence advocate strikes secretive health deal in Uganda:
This story was produced by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Valerie Huber has had a busy couple of years. Since leaving her senior post in the US government, the former Trump official has spent months travelling across Africa, from Burkina Faso to Uganda, meeting officials and heads of state from at least nine countries. Social media posts show her gladhanding ambassadors and smiling with politicians, making public her commitment to promote women’s wellbeing and health.
At the heart of her latest project is the Protego Women’s Optimal Health Framework, a public health initiative that was the subject of an agreement signed in May by Janet Museveni, Uganda’s first lady and minister for education. The programme’s launch was attended by doctors, women’s groups, politicians, even groups of schoolchildren. And it was heralded as an exciting opportunity for Uganda’s public health.
Protego is run by Huber’s charity, the Institute for Women’s Health (IWH), which says the project aims to offer, “evidence-based interventions to support the health and wellbeing of women and their families”. One of its more ambitious goals, according to a senior source in the Ugandan health ministry, is to roll out clinics that deliver a significant range of reproductive health services to women, as well as cancer screenings.
The background, however, is that Protego is Huber’s latest project in a 25-year career spent promoting ineffective abstinence-focused sex education and so-called “natural” contraceptive methods.
As a senior adviser in Donald Trump’s department of health and human services, Huber made sweeping changes that led to the closure of some evidence-based family planning programmes. She was also the driving force behind the Geneva Consensus Declaration, a statement signed by 34 countries saying that there is “no international right to abortion”.
Now The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) can reveal that Huber and her charity, the IWH, have entered into a secretive agreement with the Ugandan government to find public money to spend on her Protego programme.
What’s more, key documents relating to the project are being kept away from the public eye in a manner described by one lawyer as “unconstitutional”.
Rolling back progress
In Uganda, women’s health rests on shaky foundations. Teen pregnancies are high. Girls and young women between 15 and 24 account for almost a third of all new HIV infections. And for every thousand babies born, around three of the mothers die.
It is also a country where the issues of contraception and sex education remain deeply controversial. Religious leaders and conservative politicians have pushed back against increasing access to contraception, focusing instead on abstinence and “purity”.
But the scale of HIV-related deaths and unplanned pregnancies have forced the government’s hand. Recent pledges have been made to increase the use of modern contraceptives, including for young people. But any advances on this front are fragile, and in constant danger of regressing.
Huber, meanwhile, has spent almost three decades promoting schemes that teach young people that the best way to avoid infections and unwanted pregnancies is to forego sex. After running abstinence initiatives in Ohio, she took over the state’s abstinence-only education programme, which was found by one study to contain “false and misleading information” under her tenure. She then spent a decade leading the not-for-profit National Abstinence Education Association (later renamed Ascend) before Trump appointed her into government.
In a statement, Huber said the IWH and the Protego project drew on “science-based concepts”. She cited a number of studies which showed people undergoing abstinence education delayed their “sexual debut”, were “no less likely to use a condom” and had “improved academic success”.
Extensive research supported by major medical institutions has found this type of education does not significantly delay the initiation of sexual activity in young people — it simply leaves them ill-informed and unprepared. Some previous research has shown some young people in abstinence-based programmes are similarly likely to use condoms. But leading experts have criticised them for both withholding accurate information and including inaccurate information, as well as promoting harmful gender stereotypes.
While the full details of the Uganda agreement are unknown, Huber has met with representatives of at least one women’s hospital in the run-up to Protego’s implementation.
And her track record suggests abstinence-focused education is likely to be at the forefront of the scheme. A copy of the project’s framework and accompanying document seen by TBIJ mentions abstinence and “natural family planning” (having unprotected sex while trying to avoid the fertile part of a woman’s cycle) as well as modern evidence-based methods. It also states any discussion of contraception should include education about avoiding “sexual risks”, terminology used by Huber to describe abstinence-based education.
Gillian Kane, director of global policy at the reproductive rights charity Ipas, told the TBIJ: “There are existing programmes [in Uganda] that are vetted, they’re implemented by professionals in the field,” she said. “There are technicians who know how to provide health services.”
She said that Huber’s project “really raises a lot of questions [about] their area of expertise and what they’re replacing.”
Uganda’s ministry of health told the TBIJ that Protego will supplement, not replace, existing services. It also said the concept of abstinence is “integral to Uganda’s moral fabric” and has been used in the past to combat HIV transmission, as part of a strategy also involving contraception.
Huber’s charity, the IWH, told the TBIJ the Protego framework is “culturally sensitive” to local populations and “does not force beliefs, values, or doctrines upon a country and its people”.
The TBIJ has repeatedly asked the relevant ministries, the Organisation of African First Ladies for Development and Huber’s IWH to see the agreement and has made formal requests for information about what it contains. But with no success.
Kane said that people she has spoken to with access to Huber have been met by a “vacuum of detail about what it is”.
Sources in ministries working on the project, as well as via those providing reproductive health services in Uganda, have told the TBIJ that Protego is being coordinated by the office of the first lady — which is also where key documents relating to the project are being held. The office has no formal standing in the constitution.
A constitutional lawyer familiar with the situation, and who did not want to be named for fear of backlash, explained that the first lady’s office does not have the same status in Uganda law as a government ministry and therefore cannot be scrutinised or challenged in the same way. He described the situation as “unconstitutional”.
Finding the money
Although official details on the project are scarce, it seems clear that Museveni, Uganda’s first lady and minister of education, has thrown her full weight behind it. A commissioner in the health ministry and a member of parliament who helped set up the project have confirmed to the TBIJ that there is an agreement to find the Protego money in some form from within the existing budgets of three government ministries.
The IWH said no money would be exchanged between the charity and other parties.
Dr Richard Mugahi, assistant commissioner at Uganda’s ministry of health, told the TBIJ that not all aspects of the plan may be able to go ahead within existing budgets. But asked whether there was a path to money coming in the future, he said: “Of course. Our chief mobiliser is the first lady, who is very passionate about this.”
Museveni took up the cause after Huber was introduced to government figures by Sarah Opendi, a member of parliament and chair of the Uganda Women Parliamentary Association. Opendi, who also attended an early meeting about the project, is a backer of Uganda’s extreme anti-LGBT Bill.
She told the TBIJ she believes Protego should advocate abstinence for adolescents, rather than contraceptives, as a way to address the country’s high teen pregnancy rate.
Dr Sabrina Kitaka, a paediatrician who attended the launch event in May, seemed cautiously optimistic about the programme. Kitaka told the TBIJ she “did appreciate their vision and goal to support the girl child, to empower her, to make sure she doesn’t become pregnant before she finishes school and also to promote women’s health in general”.
But she added that “we have to not put our head in the sand” when it comes to the burden of teenage pregnancy and that contraception should be given to “those who need [it]”.
“The data shows that abstinence-only programmes do not work,” said Ophelia Kemigisha, an activist and human rights lawyer. “A return to this strategy will lead to a loss of the progress made.”
Project 2025
Huber’s ideas on the subject, however, appear unwavering. When she was appointed to the US department of health and human services in June 2017, she promptly cancelled the contracts for all 81 providers of teen pregnancy prevention programmes, which had been independently judged as effective. She then issued various funding opportunities that favoured both providers advocating abstinence-only education and “natural” family planning over medically-approved contraception. One of the results was almost a million fewer people serviced by federal family planning programmes.
Now Huber is listed as a contributor to Project 2025, a radical 900-page blueprint for the next US government, drawn up by the ultra-conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation. It says the next administration should remove all references to “gender equality”, “abortion” and “sexual and reproductive rights” from foreign aid policies, contracts and grants. It also recommends the removal of references to “controversial” sexual education materials.
When the US makes changes to its aid policies, for example excluding abortion from funding, it has a direct effect on the availability of wider reproductive health services in countries receiving US funding, including Uganda.
Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah, co-founder of the Institute for Journalism and Social Change, told the TBIJ Huber’s career and involvement in Project 2025 appeared to “point to her true agenda — to limit the sexual health and rights of girls, women and young people”.
“The outcome of her activities on the health and well-being of young people are dire.” — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Contaminated food claims a child’s life in Alexandra township:
A 10-year-old girl from Alexandra in Johannesburg died at the weekend from what the Gauteng health department called “a foodborne illness”, adding to concerns about a spate of children’s deaths from contaminated food across the province.
The child was rushed to Alexandra Community Health Centre emergency unit on Saturday night where she died. Her mother and four-year-old brother were also admitted to hospital after tasting the snacks and are recovering, the Gauteng department of health said in a statement.
“Further reports are awaited on the cause of the sudden illness and death,” it said, noting with concern the rising incidents of “foodborne illnesses, particularly those affecting children”.
“The department is working closely with multiple stakeholders and the municipalities to heighten awareness in townships, informal settlements, and hostel communities. We continue to urge the public to exercise caution when purchasing and consuming food items.”
The provincial department urged the public to buy food from reputable sellers with valid permits to operate, avoid consuming products past its expiry date and ensure that food packaging is intact. It said shops should adhere to the conditions of their permits, including compliance with environmental health regulations.
Gauteng’s MEC for economic development and finance, Lebogang Maile, on Monday visited the family of the deceased girl, and his department was investigating the matter.
The latest death comes after that of six children in Naledi, Soweto last month, allegedly after consuming food from a local spaza shop.
The national health department said a chemical called organophosphate was found in their bodies but authorities were yet to determine its source. Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi pointed out during a media briefing that police found a packet of chips in the pocket of one of the deceased boys, but there were no traces of organophosphate in the food.
On Monday, national health spokesperson Foster Mohale told the Mail & Guardian that the results from samples and swabs taken from spaza shops in Naledi would establish whether there was a direct link between the deaths of the six children and would be announced once received from the National Health Laboratory Services.
He said shops in the area had been closed for a number of reasons “including through prohibition notices for lack of compliance with relevant regulations and due to community protests”.
Mohale said municipalities, the police, as well as the departments of agriculture and small business would intensify inspections at spaza shops.
The Gauteng health department also confirmed that after conducting inspections last Friday, the City of Ekurhuleni had uncovered “serious violations at local spaza shops resulting in the issuing of a fine and another establishment being immediately shut down”.
“Another establishment was found to operate illegally on municipal land with shop owners sleeping in the shop compromising the hygiene standard,” it said. Authorities closed the shop, and confiscated unlabelled and expired food products.
Since January 2024, Gauteng has had more than 372 cases of food-related illnesses and 16 fatalities, according to the provincial health department of health.
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