Secret government deals are rarely in the public interest. They provide cover for malfeasance and protect the signatories from public scrutiny.
Thus the Health Justice Initiative should be applauded for taking legal action seeking to compel the health department to disclose its Covid-19 vaccine contracts.
Not only were these deals brokered at a time of global scarcity when pharmaceutical companies had governments worldwide over a barrel, but the Special Investigating Unit has placed senior health department officials at the heart of a corrupt deal in which procurement rules were flouted to grant a lucrative communications contract to a company run by close associates of then health minister Zweli Mkhize.
We also now know the government’s relaxation of procurement rules during the national state of disaster enabled crooks to siphon billions of rand from the state, in dodgy Covid-19 contracts ranging from personal protective equipment to hand sanitiser.
After months of delays, the health department eventually cut a series of deals for Covid-19 vaccines in 2021, ultimately securing 1.5-million doses of AstraZeneca’s shot, 30-million doses of Pfizer’s jab, and 31-million Johnson & Johnson doses. It has consistently rebuffed questions about the details of these deals, maintaining it was bound to secrecy by pharmaceutical companies and the international vaccine-sharing mechanism Covax.
Yet, aspects of these contracts have made their way into the public domain, through a variety of missteps, media reports, and the occasional public comment. We know for instance that SA got a lousy deal on prices: it stumped up more than double the price paid by the EU for AstraZeneca shots and paid Pfizer $10 a dose for its jabs, compared with the $8.50 per dose negotiated by the Europeans.
We know too that SA agreed to indemnify vaccine manufacturers from all civil and criminal claims. And we know that J&J’s prohibition of an export ban caused vaccines bottled at the Aspen plant in Gqeberha to be shipped to Europe during SA’s third wave, when the country was desperately short of vaccines. That shortage was not a mere inconvenience: it cost lives.
Court documents filed by the health department in response to the Health Justice Initiative reveal it made only partial disclosure to parliament about with whom it held talks, and raised questions about why it got as far as signing a term sheet with Moderna but never closed the deal.
Health officials have consistently defended their lack of disclosure by saying they were forced to sign nondisclosure agreements. It is a far too convenient shield against public scrutiny. It makes it impossible to gauge whether officials did a good job in the prevailing circumstances, whether they cut deals that inappropriately benefited invisible third parties, and whether part of the reason the government is poised to waste millions of vaccines that will shortly expire is because they made fundamental errors.
Demand for vaccines has slowed to a trickle, and the government is with sitting with 22-milllion unused doses, to the value of an estimated R3.2bn.
This matters not only because the constitution requires the government to administer its affairs transparently, but because the health department is positioning itself as the sole procurer of pharmaceutical products under National Health Insurance. It is clear that acting as sole procurer of Covid-19 vaccines gave it no leverage whatsoever, and the lack of transparency sets a dangerous precedent.
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