South African Editor Fears Arrest for Minister Claims

The Johannesburg Sunday Times said yesterday that it expected its editor and a journalist on its staff to be arrested this week after reporting allegations that the country's health minister was a drunk and a thief.

The newspaper said its editor, Mondli Makhanya, and reporter, Jocelyn Maker, would be "hauled off to Cape Town in connection with charges of theft and for contravention of Section 17 of the National Health Act".

The statute makes it an offense to gain access to a person's confidential medical records.

The newspaper claimed in August that during a two-day stay in a medical clinic for shoulder operations, Mantombazana Tshabalala-Msimang "threw drunken tantrums, abused nurses and washed down medication with wine and whiskey".

It said alcoholism was the reason Ms Tshabalala-Msimang recently had to have a liver transplant. The newspaper also alleged that she had been expelled from Botswana while in exile during the apartheid era for stealing from a patient who was under anesthetic.

Ms Tshabalala-Msimang, dubbed "Dr Beetroot" by opponents for advocating garlic and beetroot to fight Aids, was superintendent of a hospital at the time.

The health minister has so far failed to deny the allegations.

Ms Tshabalala-Msimang's medical records have previously been the subject of legal action, when she went to the courts to try to retrieve them.

A judge, Mr Justice Mohamed Jajbhay, ordered that the Sunday Times hand its copies of the records to the medical clinic, but ruled that there was a "pressing need" for the contents of the records to be known.

Yesterday the newspaper also carried an outspoken attack on President Thabo Mbeki. Justice Malala, the highly regarded former editor of the defunct newspaper This Day, accused Mr Mbeki of "stepping into the worlds of [the late Zairian president] Mobutu Seso Seko and [Zimbabwe's Robert] Mugabe".

"Mbeki's Stalinist leanings are fully on show," he wrote. "Journalists and editors arrested, opponents jailed upon trumped up charges; everyone in government living in fear that they are being followed, watched and bugged."