Thabo Mbeki’s presidency faced a crisis yesterday after sensational claims that his controversial Health Minister was an alcoholic who jumped the queue to receive a new liver.

The allegations about Manto Tshabalala-Msimang came as Mr Mbeki was already facing growing criticism for standing by the minister, who believes that a diet of olive oil, beetroot and garlic is the best way to combat South Africa’s Aids pandemic.

The claims were made across three pages of the Sunday Times, the country’s biggest-selling weekend newspaper. They included allegations that the minister, while in exile in neighbouring Botswana in the 1970s, was convicted of stealing jewellery, hats and handbags from hospital patients.

Under the front-page headline “Manto: A Drunk and A Thief”, the paper said that the minister was unsuitable for office. The issue of Dr Tshabalala-Msimang’s future, and Mr Mbeki’s loyalty to her, is raising questions about his judgment and is certain to play a key part in the current struggle to elect a new ANC leader.

The President infuriated many when, this month, he sacked her deputy, who had won international plaudits for her enlightened approach to Aids.

Mr Mbeki’s office said last night that he would require evidence before considering the reports. It issued a written statement in which Mr Mbeki said that anyone with evidence that one of his ministers had acted in dereliction of duty “is welcome to forward such evidence to the presidency”.

He said: “The presidency would like to reassure all South Africans of the integrity of the public health system as led by Minister Tshabalala-Msimang and the cabinet collective.” All Health Ministry spokesmen turned off their mobile phones on Sunday.

Professor Jeff Wing, Dr Tshabalala-Msimang’s doctor before, during and after her liver transplant, said that her problems had nothing to do with alcohol. Professor Wing, of the University of the Witwatersrand Medical School, said that she had not displaced anyone on the transplant waiting list.

The Sunday Times claimed that medical staff at the Donald Gordon Medical Centre in Johannesburg had been forced to cover up the true reason for the minister’s transplant in March, which it said was cirrhosis. Instead, under threat of being sacked, they said that her liver had been damaged by “autoimmune hepatitis”, the paper said.

One unnamed expert said that any other patient her age - 66 - and in her condition would not have qualified for the transplant and would have died.” The paper also claimed to have uncovered records showing that in the 1970s, while she was superintendent of Athlone Public Hospital in Lobatse, Botswana, the future Health Minister was convicted of theft and declared a prohibited immigrant. Dr Tshabalala-Msimang, at that time an exiled member of the banned African National Congress, was convicted, it said, of stealing from patients. On one occasion, it was claimed, she had stolen a watch from a patient while the woman was under anaesthetic.

Mr Mbeki has resolutely supported Dr Tshabalala-Msimang and endorsed her Aids-denialist views. He is on record as doubting that Aids is caused by HIV. She argues that antiretroviral drugs, endorsed internationally as a means of delaying the onset of full-blown AIDS, hasten death more quickly than the disease.

Her views have earned her, and Mr Mbeki, the scorn of international Aids scientists, while satirists have dubbed her “Dr Beetroot,” “Dr No” and, now, “Dr Pickled Liver”.

During the Health Minister’s six-month convalescence her deputy, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, improved the country’s Aids-prevention programme. On August 9 Mr Mbeki sacked Mrs Madlala-Routledge after she said that the deteriorating condition of public hospitals amounted to a national emergency.

Unhealthy minister

- Manto Tshabalala-Msimang was educated in the former USSR and took her degree at the First Leningrad Medical Institute in 1969

- She later specialised in Obstetrics & Gynaecology, gaining a diploma from the University of Dar es Salaam in 1973

- Unable to practice in apartheid South Africa, she worked as medical superintendent in Botswana’s Lobatse Hospital from 1973 to 1976. She is accused of stealing form her patients and was allegedly banned from the country

- From 1976 she divided her time between Tanzania and Zambia, working for the UN and the Organisation of African Unity as well as serving the ANC

- She returned to South Africa in 1991, coordinating the ANC’s health plan before becoming Deputy Minister of Justice in 1996

- She became Minister for Health in President Mbeki’s Government in 1999

- Tshabalala-Msimang has two daughters and lists her hobbies as music, reading and cooking. Mutton curry is her favourite dish to cook, “with garlic of course”

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