A couple years back at a Gallagher Estates gathering Jacob Zuma kicked off his address to assembled business leaders with a misguided attack” “How can you people say we have no leadership?” he asked, motioning towards cabinet ministers assembled on his side of the table. Zuma is very wrong. As usual.
Ever since Roman emperor Nero made his horse a Consul, history tells us simply appointing someone into position does not magically qualify them for the job. The ANC’s cadre deployment strategy which rewards party loyalty not competence, ignores this – and South Africa reaps the consequences.
Having spent a decade and a half focusing on SA’s medical field, there are few better qualified to write the story that follows than my Biznews colleague Chris Bateman. And he is furious – for very good reason.
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Chris writes: “There’s a worryingly popular tendency among ANC legislators to blame the lack of service delivery on selfish, unpatriotic, money-oriented professionals who forfeit the state sector for the private one.
This is most evident in public healthcare, where thinly-spread doctors and specialists prop up a shaky and dysfunctional delivery system (for pay not much less than their private colleagues). When patients die on them because of absent or faulty equipment, and working conditions become intolerable, they leave.
Word filters down to their newly-qualified colleagues whose two-year internships have so verified their stories that 17% of new graduates did not report for the ensuing community service between 2004 and 2009, (latest available stats – you must complete a year of community service to practice in SA.)
So, when KwaZulu Natal’s Health MEC, Sibongiseni Dlomo, this week played the patriotism card in response to the province’s last two oncologists resigning from Durban’s Inkosi Albert Luthuli Academic Hospital, I saw red.
State cancer patients now have to relocate to another province, get private sector treatment – or die. But Dlomo uses a red herring to shift blame.
I checked with oncologists in Durban and Johannesburg, private and public, and they cited work pressure, dysfunctional equipment and lack of proper oncology drugs in the State sector, never mind frozen newly-vacated posts.
“Dlomo is nuts,” says Monica Vaithilingum, the only paediatric oncologist (private) in Durban. She’d go back to the State if there was a post available, ‘but they keep freezing posts’.
Professor Janet Poole, Principal Specialist and Unit head of Paediatric Haematology/Oncology at Johannesburg General Hospital (aka Charlotte Maxeke) says posts are being frozen “left, right and centre”.
One of her team recently resigned for personal reasons. The post is not being re-advertised. Another colleague is retiring at the end of the year. If she’s down to three (including herself), with an annual new patient load of 100 kids a year, it will become untenable.
“We’re not asking for more posts, just the ones we have,” she stresses. With no training posts funded, she’s had to source external finance to train her two current Fellows. They’ll qualify, but there’ll be no posts. KZN has a huge resources problem, especially with oncology drugs.
Meanwhile the number of new cancer patients slowly grows. Adds Poole; “It’s hardly unpatriotic when people leave. You have to be able to do something for patients. You can’t keep banging your head against a brick wall”. It seems the metaphorical cancer eating at our fiscus may be the real problem.”
Like Pravin Gordhan, Chris’s piece tells us to join the dots. It is society’s most vulnerable who are being hit hardest by SA’s industrial scale corruption. And at this level, it is existential. The financial crimes perpetrated by Zuma, Gupta and their network of patronage are not victimless.
