- Dr Kgosi Letlape, South Africa’s first black ophthalmologist, terminated his ANC membership and joined ActionSA.
- He is now a member of Parliament and serves on the Portfolio Committee on Health.
- In an interview with Spotlight, Letlape speaks about leaving the ANC, healthcare in the country, gender-based violence, and the murder of his daughter.
A day after the elections that would see him go to South Africa’s Parliament as a representative of ActionSA, Dr Kgosi Letlape found his daughter Thembekile, a Johannesburg confectioner known as “The Pastry Princess”, stabbed inside her boyfriend’s home in Fourways. He headed to the property after she had sent a distress text message to a relative. The boyfriend was subsequently arrested for the murder.
At the parliamentary precinct, inside his office adjacent to the Marks Building, on his chest, Letlape is wearing a pin bearing Thembekile’s face and the words: “Forever in our hearts.”
Thembekile was 38 years old.
Speaking to Spotlight, he leans across his desk, his words precise.
He says:
Injustices against women are embedded across all cultures.
“We must do ourselves a favour and be cautious about making things about black and white, or rich and poor. There are groups who might find themselves at the worst end of the stick – but nobody should face this stick, whatever your ethnicity, whether you are rich or you are poor. I mean, we don’t consider ourselves poor, but we lost our daughter.”
Letlape and his wife Mpho had four children. Thembekile was their second born.
“She died because she loved him. We met him, a deputy head boy at his high school; a master’s degree in finances … My issue is when are we going to stop looking at a symptom (gender-based violence), and go down to the root of how this can be prevented? The root cause being misogyny woven into our social fabric – seeds planted by social norms, men socialised to see women as their property.
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“And this happens around the world. The current presidential candidate of the [US] Republican Party [Donald Trump], talking glibly about groping and molesting women. And despite all those public confessions, he was made the most powerful man in the world? Those things become normalised.”
‘Team Fix South Africa’
In March, ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba unveiled Letlape as part of the party’s “Team Fix South Africa”, saying Letlape would “spearhead [their] efforts to transform South Africa’s healthcare sector”. Letlape now serves on the Portfolio Committee for Health.
As our interview starts, ActionSA’s parliamentary leader, Athol Trollip, is just leaving Letlape’s office; having dropped by to bring Letlape a small fan heater. Letlape points out how cold his office is, saying it is temporary, given space constraints after Parliament’s fire damage.
Raised in Soweto, 65-year-old Letlape attended medical school at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, further specialising to become South Africa’s first black ophthalmologist. He has served as chairperson of the South African Medical Association (SAMA) and president of the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA). In 2003, Letlape worked closely with then president Nelson Mandela in setting up the Tshepang Trust, which facilitated early antiretroviral treatment for HIV-positive patients.
Outspoken about NHI
After terminating his ANC membership earlier this year, Letlape spoke out against the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill in his new role with ActionSA, saying while it may be “well intentioned”, it would open up the health system to corruption while not addressing the sector’s shortcomings.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” he tells Spotlight.
“The NHI might have noble intentions, but the execution will be far more harmful than the Life Esidimeni tragedy [which saw 144 vulnerable patients die of starvation and neglect at Gauteng psychiatric facilities]. So, let us not be fooled by intent. Let us learn; this government has never even uttered a word of apology for the Life Esidimeni tragedy.”
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Parliament’s portfolio committees were announced in early July; with Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo of the ANC elected as chair of the health portfolio committee. These committees are tasked with processing draft legislation and holding the government to account. Letlape, for one, is not afraid to challenge the country’s executive.
In our interview, Letlape raises questions around leaders deliberating the NHI while using private healthcare services themselves.
“Hypocrisy is a nice way to describe it,” he says. “It’s evil. In that case, why don’t members of Parliament use public healthcare services themselves?”
‘Like being in an abusive relationship’
He goes on to accuse the ANC of creating a new apartheid “based not on colour, but on class”; adding that being a member of the ANC is like being in an abusive relationship.
“And it’s very difficult to get out of an abusive relationship because you love the person that abuses you,” he says. “You are hoping that it will get better. You are hoping that change is around the corner. The ANC promised us a better world, then one day you realise it’s not happening.
“You don’t start off being a victim of abuse. You always start where you think: ‘This is it! We are going to spend the rest of our lives together.’ And because there’s so much that happens in that relationship; the investment, and sometimes you may have children, you marry into a family, all the social constructs .. you have this belief. It’s the same thing. Because, when you grow up oppressed as we were, and you fight for liberation, and there are all these promises of a better world for all – it’s not something that’s easy to abandon, even when it is clear that this better world is not coming.”
Looking back, he says: “There was the gaslighting of the [Jacob] Zuma years, but it’s not like everything was perfect and then Zuma messed it up. It’s not like there were no corruption for the first 15 years [before Zuma became president in 2009]. We had the Arms Deal, which comes from the first administration…”
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Asked about his relationship with Mandela – the Nelson Mandela Foundation provided the Tshepang Trust with a R10 million grant, enabling the rollout of antiretroviral drugs at Cape Town’s GF Jooste Hospital under Letlape’s watch as SAMA chairperson from 2003 – he describes the late president as “the absent landlord” in terms of corruption.
“I have great admiration for Nelson Mandela. You go through periods where you feel disappointed that things have not turned out [as promised] … and I think he may have been the absent landlord.”
Letlape says the Tshepang Trust remains one of the biggest achievements of his career.
“We had the R10 million grant from the Nelson Mandela Foundation, then later we also had money coming in from Pepfar (the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). But eventually, as relationships became better, it was decided that they [Pepfar] would give money directly to the Department of Health. By this time, ARVs were widely available – that’s what we had done. I said to the staff members: ‘We are one of a few NGOs that was set up for a certain purpose; we achieved that purpose, and now we need to close. We’ve made a difference in South Africa, now let’s move on’.”
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On Letlape’s desk there is an apple and a take-away coffee cup. He relays that he spent his first night at the Acacia Park Parliamentary Village just the previous night. His home address is in Saxonwold, Johannesburg.
Above and beyond health meetings, Letlape is attending debates relating to other issues at Parliament: Tourism, trade, science and technology, and justice. Last week, at a Department of Justice and Constitutional Development budget vote debate before the National Assembly, Letlape described femicide as a national sport.
‘Traumatised by the justice system’
To Spotlight, Letlape says: “Our daughter’s boyfriend is in prison. We are waiting now, feeling traumatised by the justice system. How many people have waited for years and years? How many families have suffered serious loss, only to be further victimised by the justice system?
“I still feel for Reeva Steenkamp’s family. We need a system that employs and trains police officers. We used to have, when I grew up, the Brixton Murder and Robbery Squad, and it produced convictions. One of the things that we have to deal with [is] our Constitution … Victims lose their rights and suddenly alleged perpetrators, their rights become the preoccupation of our legal and justice system?”
Just last month, mourners filled the Bryanston Methodist Church in Johannesburg for Thembekile’s funeral.
Wrapping up the interview in his office, Letlape pulls on his coat. Next up he will sit in on a meeting of the Portfolio Committee on Science, Technology and Innovation. He joins a throng of people in a maze of corridors, spilling out the building into a rainy Cape Town morning.
*This article was first published by Spotlight – health journalism in the public interest. Sign up to the Spotlight newsletter.