Former struggle stalwart and one of the country's foremost health academics - Professor Jerry Coovadia - makes known his candid views on the state of affairs in South Africa in an interview in September 2008

BY SUBRY GOVENDER In September 2008, I had embarked on a programme to interview former struggle stalwarts about their concerns with the failure of the new non-racial and democratic government to tackle issues such as poverty, unemployment, violent crime, social and economic marginalisation of the majority of the people and political greed. It was a period when another struggle veteran, Professor Fatima, who is now late, had expressed her disappointment with the manner in which the post-apartheid government was failing in its duties to unite all the people in the struggles against growing social and economic divide among the people. One of the first former struggle stalwarts I spoke to was Professor Hoosen Jerry Coovadia, who was the country’s foremost health academics and a former well-known struggle stalwart. Professor Coovadia was forthright in his views about the social, economic and political prevalent in 2008. His views are still prevalent today, eight years later, with acute lack of political leadership, widespread political divisions within the ruling ANC, high rate of fraud and corruption, runaway violent crime, student uprisings at universities for the scrapping of fees, lack of service delivery by officials at national, provincial and local government, growing unemployment, poverty, inequality and lack of growth in the economy. This is the radio feature I had compiled in 2008 after speaking to Professor Coovadia. The sound creation and mix by Salma Patel.