Manto Tshabalala-Msimang obituary

South African minister of health notorious for her stance on Aids

Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who has died aged 69 of complications arising from a liver transplant, was South Africa's most notorious cabinet minister since the apartheid era. "A drunkard and a thief" was how the Johannesburg Sunday Times described the former minister of health. The headline hardly did her justice, the "theft" having been a wristwatch taken from the arm of a comatose patient; the drunkenness being in anticipation of a transplant.

Under her leadership, life expectancy in South Africa fell to 49 years, thanks to Aids-related fatalities which – with 4.2 million infected by the virus – saw deaths nearly double between 1999 and 2005. The fury of Aids activists was compounded by her refusal to allow nevirapine to be administered to pregnant woman, although research proved it effective in preventing the transmission of the virus.

A disaster on strategic planning, Tshabalala-Msimang turned to her lifelong mentor, President Mbeki, and a never-ending procession of medical advisers abroad, whose views on treating HIV and Aids chimed with her own.

Feeble attempts were made to defend the government's position on Aids, with such arguments as the inability of South Africa to afford anti-retroviral drugs. But the lie was given to that in 2002, when Tshabalala-Msimang blocked US funding to assist in the distribution of anti-retrovirals in her homeland, KwaZulu-Natal. She owed her political survival to Mbeki, and only after his fall last year did she leave office. She was awaiting a second transplant when she died.

The Johannesburg Sunday Times gives a chilling epitaph on Tshabalala-Msimang: "Those who took the health minister at her word, died."

Mantombazana Edmie Tshabalala-Msimang, politician, born 9 October 1940; died 16 December 2009