Just a day into his new job as Limpopo province MEC for health & social development in 2004, Seaparo Charles Sekoati found himself taking the rap for a public hospital bungle he knew nothing about. "That was a baptism of fire," he says. "It made me realise there's no time to blink in this job." He was recalling the "mishap" of babies being accidentally switched at birth.
This month, Sekoati came head to head with another crisis - the cholera spillover into Musina from Zimbabwe. He quickly points out that the small border town is not contaminated but merely a sanctuary for infected Zimbabweans. "People travel and walk (from Zimbabwe) to get to a hospital here. Sometimes, it's too late but we're trying our best with the help of selfless organisations."
Cholera-related deaths in Musina are pegged at 10. But in Zimbabwe, the official death toll is 800 since the outbreak last month, with the Médicins sans Frontieres putting it much higher.
Sekoati, who's perceived as an Mbeki-ite (which almost cost him a place on the provincial ANC list), lambastes the Zimbabwean leadership for failing to reach a political settlement "to help save lives and improve people's lives". Breaking with ANC tradition, he expresses fears that Zimbabwe's failures can "replicate themselves in SA if we don't have a conscience as leaders, public servants and ordinary citizens... When people start stealing from the poor," he says referring to corruption, "they have lost their humanity and their conscience."
Sekoati (41) grew up in Phalaborwa, where his father worked for a copper mining firm. Instead of playing soccer like other teenagers in the area, Sekoati spent his Sundays at union meetings. At 14 he was a budding politician.
He has held leadership positions in youth, student and community formations. In the early 1990s, he was ANC Youth League provincial deputy chairman.
Because Sekoati was the second-born in a family of nine, his father wanted him to find a job to provide for his younger siblings instead of pursuing his dream to study journalism. He refused. Armed with R20, he made it to the University of the North at Turfloop, where he hooked up with his old comrades who helped him get a bursary to enrol for a BA. Back in Phalaborwa, for the first two years "my father didn't know I was at varsity, he thought I was doing politics".
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