By Chris Bateman*
Police fired teargas and rubber bullets at some 300 protestors outside the award-winning Zithulele District Hospital near Mthatha early on Thursday afternoon as a long-standing feud between clinicians and a new nurse CEO erupted into violence.
According to the newly resigned clinical manager, Dr Ben Gaunt, the community protest, one of several over the past few weeks calling for the resignation of the new CEO, began about 7.30am, remaining peaceful until some 15 police arrived in a Casspir, minibus and two ‘patrol’ vehicles several hours later.
“Without any warning they began firing teargas and rubber bullets. One protestor was hit in the eye by a rubber bullet, my 16-year-old daughter was hit on the foot by a rubber bullet and myself and my other 14-year-old child were nearly overcome by teargas. We’d just come out of our house after hearing shots,” the shocked and breathless veteran of the hospital told the Mail and Guardian.
He said individual protestors were hit in the head and arm by rubber bullets and another allegedly slapped by a hospital board member while he was shoved by police as he filmed the violence.
Zithulele is situated on the coast some 100km from Mthatha and is arguably the country’s most successful deep rural hospital, having won several prestigious awards for its holistic healthcare delivery. However, it is now facing implosion and multiple pending doctor resignations after the new CEO’s arrival in October last year. She has made wide-ranging changes, discharging patients to clinics against the advice of her clinicians and alleging that they are benefiting financially from several NGOs they’ve set up over the past 17 years.
The feud turned toxic in spite of a failed top-level meeting with provincial officials and local stakeholders after which the core two longstanding husband and wife doctor couples handed in their notice At least 10 among the 14 remaining doctors have signalled their intention to follow suit The wider context is an R890 million hospital construction upgrade about to start. The project has a R280 million BEE component, promising some 200 local jobs and the local headman and councillor have aligned themselves with the new CEO, with reported threats to local residents that they’d be denied jobs unless they signed a petition in favor of the new CEO.
Dr Gaunt said the police action had inflamed the situation, with protestors having subsequently lit a fire outside the hospital gates before regathering on a distant field.
“I’m pretty sure there are agendas here. Recently there was a taxi strike in (nearby) Mqanduli that lasted all day, blocking the main Coffee Bay road, with burning tyres – but there was no action whatsoever by the police,” he added.
The University of Cape Town-educated Gaunt and Le Roux doctor couples have facilitated half a dozen highly effective NGOs delivering education, nutrition and HIV treatment and formed close knit ties with the local community via their daily battles to save lives and heal patients in what is one of South Africa’s most impoverished rural districts. The hospital serves an area of some 125, 000 people. One recently fired hospital translator working for the doctor-initiated Jabulani Trust, told the Mail and Guardian, upon being asked what might be driving the behaviour of the local headman and councillor; “They want those buildings the doctors are living in to run their businesses– and the money that’s coming with the new hospital upgrade.”
Dr Gaunt is suing the local union for defamation and considering another claim against the CEO herself for repeating allegations that he received backhanders in the recent erection of a cellphone tower and that he’s a dishonest racist bent on securing profits for himself and his fellow doctors via the multiple NGOs they’ve facilitated and invested in. A provincial health enquiry into the internal hospital conflict is due to release its findings within days.
Eastern Cape Director General of Health, Dr Rolene Wagner, had not responded to requests for comment at the time of going to press.
- Chris Bateman was News Editor of Izindaba, the news section of the SA Medical Journal from 2000 to 2016 and spent the prior decade covering provincial and national politics for the Cape Times after graduating from covering the Cape Flats townships during the ‘struggle years.” He’s a fluent Nguni linguist and grew up at a trading store in deep rural KwaZulu-Natal.
Read also:
- Zithulele Hospital’s veteran status at risk of toxic political interference
- Eskom outages pose life-threatening hurdles in deep rural hospitals
- Politics subsumes genuine healthcare, with no effort to intervene
