Azapo has lambasted the government for its failure to hire medical doctors while praising the health minister for his honesty.
Recently unemployed doctors protested outside the Department of Health offices in Pretoria.
They complained that they were sitting idle at home while there was a shortage of medical doctors in the public sector.
Azapo released a statement on Saturday in which it compared the deaths in Marikana, relating to a wildcat strike at Lonmin in 2012, to the plight of doctors without jobs.
The government is complicit in the suffering of its citizens
“The 30 years of democracy have seen the state, through government, becoming complicit in the destruction of many public enterprises meant to serve the poor and lift them from the ravages of exploitative capitalism.
“Worker unions in the public sector have had unenviable battles for a living wage, better working conditions with an unresponsive government they helped establish.
“Those that were expected to understand the plight of the poor and downtrodden were more fierce and violent than the private capitalists,” the party said.
“Workers at Marikana can relate to this, when political power was wielded [against them], 34 were left dead and many wounded.”
Azapo compares Marikana to plight of doctors
On August 16 2012, police shot at a crowd of protesting mineworkers in what has become known as the Marikana massacre in Rustenburg, North West.
That Thursday now stands in infamy besides June 16, Sharpeville and Boipatong massacres as days on which the state unleashed the most brutal assault on citizens.
“Azapo notes with deep regret the statement by the minister of health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi that the government is unable to hire the qualified doctors who are unemployed despite the huge shortage of medical personnel in public hospitals.”
It added this happened despite the doctor-patient ratio in South Africa standing at 3 to 10 000 and “getting worse”.
Government has put itself ahead of the people
The party said the stock government excuse that “there is no money to pay doctors” is a lie. It said this was betrayed by “the swift manner with which money to fund the bloated GNU charade” was found.
“Azapo can only echo the words of Steve Biko: ‘Black man you are on your own’.”
But the party had a somewhat good word, albeit dripping with facetious derision, for Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi.
The state is worse that the private sector
“Azapo appreciates the honesty of Dr. Motsoaledi as he confirms that which was said by Karl Kautsky back in 1891: ‘As an exploiter of labour, the state is worse than any private capitalist. Besides the economic power of the capitalists, it (the state) can also bring to bear upon the exploited classes the political power which it already wields’.”
To highlight this oppressive regression Azapo added: “Classrooms in black townships and villages are overcrowded with some classes having 60 or more learners, the poor lament that public health facilities are deathtraps, and they reluctantly go there because there is no alternative.
“Each administration comes with lofty promises but the reality on the ground points to deterioration.
“Government attitude is like that of a young human resource manager who went to his CEO to complain that most of the personnel they train tend to leave for better offers. The CEO asked: ‘Would you rather we do not train them, and they stay?’.
“The least that the government can do is to train these unemployed doctors in scarce specialised skills that the country desperately needs.”
Kautsky was the Prague-born German Marxist theorist and philosopher.
He led the German Social Democratic Party and became known as the conscience of socialism.
He died aged 84, in 1938.
