An enduring narrative persists among the media and citizens alike, which goes something like this: The real power at the government enclave lies not with Cabinet Ministers nor with senior civil servants. That power rests instead in the hands of the Covid-19 Presidential task force which has direct access to the President Mokgweetsi Masisi.
Sunday Standard investigations have turned up documented evidence revealing that the so called all powerful Covid-19 Task Team is all “big hat and no cattle.”
In a telling example that shows that the Covid-19 is at the bottom of the pile in the government enclave perking order, former PSP, Elias Magosi in a letter dated 24th March 2021 advised the Presidential Task Team that they should report to him and the Director of Health Services. The Director of Health Services ranks below the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health and Wellness.
The Presidential Covid-19 Task team’s powerlessness comes up strongly in a series of internal correspondences between the task team and the former Permanent Secretary to the President.
It emerges from the letters that the Task team was kept in the dark about the procurement of the Covid-19 vaccine and only got to know about the Arm Ready vaccination event when it was publicised in the media.
In one of the letters dated 7th March 2021, it is apparent that among senior government officials, the task force was not only powerless, but was also inconsequential.
The letter reveals that the Presidential Task Team was never notified about “statutory instruments intended to curb the spread of COVID-19.” And this was not isolated incidents, but part of a pattern. For example, it also emerges in an earlier letter dated 4th January 2021 that when the country came back from the Christmas holiday, a Covid-19 super spreader event, the Task Force was for two months kept in the dark about the exponential growth in Covid-19 infections. The letter states that the task team “had not received report from District Health Management teams for almost two months.”
The task Team has also been maligned for alleged corruption in the award of Covid-19 tenders. It is however apparent from their correspondence with the former PSP that the Task team has never awarded any tender. In a bid to curb alleged corruption in the award of Covid-19 tenders, President Masisi instructed that award of tenders for vaccines and testing kits, which are new products on the health market should be routed through the Covid-19 Procurement office which is under the Covid-19 Task Force. It however emerges from the letter dated 7th March to the former PSP that the Task Force was side-lined in the procurement of Covid-19 services and equipment.
In the letter, the Task Team proposed that, “procurement team on testing, contact tracing/surveillance resources and PPEs should be removed from the Coordination Covid-19 office as this coordination office has not been able to provide oversight on procurement as there are several purchases that the procurement team processes directly with the Ministry of Health and Wellness and the Ministry of Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration.”
