Dr Kenneth Jacobs stresses the importance of safety nets for whistle-blowers, and of establishing technological systems to enforce accountability. More than most, Jacobs is in a position to do something about these issues
More than most, Jacobs is in a position to do something about these issues. Last month, the ANC MP was elected chairperson of the National Assembly’s portfolio committee on health.
“You know, it’s so interesting to watch the Zondo commission,” he says. “Because it really does surprise one. It does make one feel that we could have done so much better as a country.” On Jacobs’ appointment, Philip van Staden, Freedom Front Plus MP and the party’s spokesperson for health said, “Dr Jacobs is highly qualified in the medical field … He is, among other things, a scientist as well as a medical doctor. The party hopes that Dr Jacobs will consider the inputs and opinions of opposition parties and not, like previous chairpersons, focus only on furthering and executing the ANC’s policy.”I think he’s correct in the sense that the chairperson should be neutral.
One of eight siblings born to his father, who worked in a shoe factory, and his mother, a home executive, Jacobs says today they have six – soon to be seven – medical doctors in the family.“My father lost his employment as a shoemaker in the factory when I was in standard eight [grade 10]. So my father didn’t have funds for both my two elder brothers to study.
In 1983, at UCT, he was working on a master’s degree in biochemistry, which he was about to upgrade to a PhD, when he says apartheid police forced him to flee to Namibia.“I’ve always been interested in chronic diseases and things like obesity and diabetes,” he says. “But I had to give up on that opportunity.”
I worked with the emerging Springboks, with [rugby coach] Heyneke Meyer and, of course, with some of the Springboks.Jacobs played rugby himself, which he gave up when he got spectacles for his eyesight. “I played at school level and early university days, but then I had to get spectacles. We didn’t have contact lenses back then. And these guys, they run you into the ground if you can’t see where the ball is. So unfortunately I had to stop rugby, but then I pursued athletics instead.
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