- Gallery: Manto Tshabalala-Msimang
By Gaye Davis and Kerry Cullinan
The controversies that surrounded her during her tenure as health minister cast a long shadow over the life of Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
She was reviled by HIV/Aids activists, drew international condemnation for theories described as "more worthy of a lunatic fringe", and was lampooned as "Dr Beetroot" for promoting this vegetable, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil as boosting the immunity of people with HIV/Aids, while arguing that antiretrovirals had toxic side effects.
Successive calls for her dismissal - led by the Treatment Action Campaign - had no effect. The trashing of South Africa's stand, which carried a display of fruit and vegetables, at an International Aids Conference in 2006 embarrassed the government and led international scientists to write a letter of protest to then-president Thabo Mbeki.
The following year saw Tshabalala-Msimang become the subject of headlines alleging she was a "drunk and a thief". These related to the alleged theft in 1976 of a watch from the wrist of a comatose patient in Botswana, where Tshabalala-Msimang was then working, and to allegations that in 2005 she had sent hospital staff to buy wine, whisky and food for her while she was recovering from a shoulder operation. She successfully sued for the return of her medical records, on which the latter allegations had been based.
It was also in 2007 that she had her liver transplant. Allegations that she had "jumped the queue" were dismissed, as were suggestions that the transplant was necessary because she had alcohol-related cirrhosis. The official reason given was that she had an auto-immune hepatitis.
Her latter career saw Tshabalala-Msimang become the butt of ridicule that obscured the energy and commitment she had displayed in setting up district health care systems and reducing the number of deaths caused by malaria - although the use of DDT, a chemical banned in most countries, has come under fresh scrutiny because it has been linked to birth defects.
She also piloted tough anti-smoking legislation.
Perhaps Tshabalala-Msimang's biggest weakness in office was an inability to make strategic alliances. Instead of forging close ties with the medical fraternity and health activists, she turned to a range of dubious sources for advice on how to deal with HIV/AIDS, the country's biggest health problem.
Dutch nurse Tine van der Maas, German vitamin seller Matthias Rath, and uBhejane promoter Herbert Vilakazi all had the minister's ear.
Tshabalala-Msimang gave Van der Maas access to desperately ill state patients in hospitals in the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and the Free State to try out her garlic, lemon, olive oil and African Solutions vitamins.
She featured in a video promoting the nurse's "miracle cure", although Van der Maas followed none of the accepted ethical guidelines in her "research".
Tshabalala-Msimang allowed associates of Rath, who encouraged people to abandon ARVs in favour of his vitamins, to address the SA National Aids Council, despite press reports that a number of people using Rath's remedies had died.
Vilakazi was given access to top politicians to promote the traditional remedy, uBhejane, in which he had interests. Tshabalala-Msimang also included him in a special ministerial task team appointed to consider the integration of traditional medicine into health services.
Alienated from most of the country's top scientists and doctors, Tshabalala-Msimang was notoriously intolerant of criticism. When the press wrote about her conflicts with Dr Malegapuru Makgoba, the then-president of the Medical Research Council, she ordered a forensic audit at the council to try to find the source of leaks.
The Treatment Action Campaign was Tshabalala-Msimang's nemesis and at the forefront of the campaign to have her axed.
The campaign was supported by the DA, the ID, the African Christian Democratic Party, the Freedom Front Plus, the United Democratic Movement and National Democratic Convention, all of which signed a petition appealing to Mbeki to remove Tshabalala-Msimang from office.
Many believed Tshabalala-Msimang was representing the views of Mbeki, the first person in government to question whether HIV caused Aids.
Tshabalala-Msimang had close ties with Mbeki. They left the country together for exile in 1962 and her unwavering loyalty to him was rewarded by her steady climb through the ANC ranks.
Born in Emfume on KwaZulu-Natal's south coast on October 9, 1940, she matriculated from the Inanda Seminary in 1959 and went to Fort Hare University, where she met Mbeki. When she told her mother she was leaving the country, the older woman urged her to study medicine.
She graduated with a medical degree from Leningrad Medical Institute in the then-Soviet Union and in 1980 obtained a Master's degree in Public Health from the University of Antwerp in Belgium. She worked as a registrar at Muhimbili Hospital in Tanzania and as medical superintendent of Lobatse Hospital in Botswana.
In 1990, after 28 years in exile, Tshabalala-Msimang returned with other ANC exiles to prepare to govern the country. She played an important role on the ANC's health desk and in the Progressive Primary Health Care Network, and became an MP in 1994.
She served as deputy minister of justice from 1996 until 1999, when she became health minister. Extremely hard-working, she travelled tirelessly from province to province, helping improve the immunisation rate of babies, achieving a very significant reduction in the country's malaria deaths, and setting up 53 functioning health districts countrywide.
Tshabalala-Msimang was a well-entrenched member of the ANC's hierarchy through her marriage to Mendi Msimang, the party's treasurer-general for many years and former high commissioner to London.
Last year, after Mbeki was recalled, she was made minister in the Presidency by then-president Kgalema Motlanthe. She was not included in President Jacob Zuma's cabinet and dropped out of view until it was announced recently that she was in hospital with complications arising from her transplant.
Last year, she was appointed African Union goodwill ambassador and champion of the Movement to Improve Maternal Health and Promote Child Survival and Development in Africa.
She leaves her daughters, Zuki and Pulane, and three grandchildren.