The day I met Manto

I was studying in New Delhi when a hero from the local courier service dropped by with an invite for the party of the year. It was ten years since 1994 and the South African Embassy was hosting a monstrously huge bash to celebrate our decade long democracy.

Never mind the histrionics regarding the hosting of such an expensive bash at a five-star hotel, thousands of kilometres away from a country supposedly ten years young but some three hundred years behind everything else (surely this is a topic for another time). But for starters, India was an important ANC ally throughout the struggle years and perhaps it made some sort of high-ranking-protocol-endearing-diplomatic-sense to celebrate liberation in style.

It wasn’t long before I buried my pseudo lefty skepticism regarding obese party expense: not with the good food, Hugh Masekela LIVE and wait for this, the presence of Manto Tshabalala-Msimang at the party. And as the music climbed into the night, I watched her throughout: eating, drinking and gently swaying that upper torso like only the proverbial African queen could do.

I waited for the appropriate moment and nonchalantly walked up to her and introduced myself as a South African student in Delhi. She greeted me with that genuine, almost apolitical warmth of a mother from back home interested in her flock grazing in another land (farming metaphor intended). Unfortunately Manto failed to recognise the omnipresent deviant located within me (like every other self-righteous foreign student) and I simply lured her highness into an inexorable mind job.

“Oh, you are a student here … how nice! What are you studying?” she asked.

I answered confidently amidst the din around, “I’m doing my MA in Social Sciences”.

She nodded with approval but seemed to motion for some elaboration.

I took a deep breath, looked her in the eye and smiled, “My primary focus is HIV/Aids and access to anti-retroviral drugs in South Africa”

“Oh … okay”, she retorted forcing an emergent grimace into a lethargic smile.

She immediately gathered her drink and walked away.

Of course, I had only ever done two relatively short papers on ARV drug access in South Africa, so I was no expert on the issue. In fact, I was actually focusing on South Asian media studies at the time. But needless to say, knowing that she was the main villain behind the ongoing HIV/Aids and ARV treatment drama unfolding in South Africa, unnerving her for just a moment was priceless …

And today she is finally gone.

It took a president to resign and an entire reshuffling of the cabinet to get rid of her.
But she is finally gone, and our disheveled Health Ministry can shift gears at last.