By Mosibudi Mangena
Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital is a hell hole, so says the health ombudsman, professor Malegapuru Makgoba.
He confirmed what has been said by many before.
The hospital is badly run. Pregnant women sleep on the floor; linen is short or filthy; toilets are not working; wall paint is peeling off and the entire hospital is dirty and unhygienic. The hospital has no blood bank or a functioning scanner.
Unfortunately, Rahima Moosa is a microcosm of the health sector in the entire country. It might be the worst, but it is not the only one.
Most hospitals and clinics are dilapidated, short-staffed, badly run and more often lack medication and equipment.
Due to short-staffing, the available health personnel is over-worked, exhausted, frustrated and demoralised. Some of these workers take their frustrations on innocent patients.
The politicians, their civil servants and the health professionals have medical aid and do not use state facilities when they and their families are sick. They use private doctors and private hospitals.
Less than 20% population has medical aid. More than 80% of the working class, the poor and the unemployed, rely exclusively on the public health system for their health needs.
The vast majority of those in charge of the public health system are black, especially the African component.
What is clear is that the black petit bourgeoisie has not only abandoned fellow poor blacks in the townships and villages, who are the ones most reliant on the public health system, but they hate and abuse them.
By extension, they exhibit a profound hatred of themselves.
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union strike (that ended this week) is an eloquent articulation of this horrible self-hate. The fight over salaries and working conditions is among the elites themselves.
But instead of fighting out in parliament and offices of the health departments, they decide to abuse, ill-treat, intimidate, and harm the poor patients by denying them the right to access health facilities.
In addition to blocking access gates to these facilities, they went as far as to enter wards, pull out non-striking colleagues and prevent ambulances carrying seriously ill patients from entering hospitals.
That is, the political black petit bourgeoisie, their bureaucrats and the health professionals, choose the sick bodies of their people as an arena on which to wage their struggles against one another. There is nothing as grotesque as this phenomenon.
The masses of our people waged the struggle against the white minority regime led, by and large, by the black petit bourgeoisie.
Mangaliso Sobukwe, Nelson Mandela, Bantu Biko, Chris Hani, and many others belong to this class. Many among the citizens of this country laid down their lives for a better country in which they could live in peace, safety, dignity, and humanity.
But alas, the black middle class has lost its political and moral compass, as well as being consumed by the worst manifestations of slave mentality.
They have turned against the very people who were the engine of the struggle against oppression.
It is this class that has stolen state resources that would have enabled the hiring of more health workers and reduced under-staffing, procured equipment and medication for the health facilities and hopefully improved the remuneration of medical workers.
The poor and unemployed citizens did not steal any money from the state. Why should they be abused like this for the sins of the petit bourgeoisie?
Clearly, a reconstruction of the hearts, consciences and souls of the leadership in this country is more urgent than ever.
• Mangena is former cabinet minister, ex-Azapo president, former Robben Island prisoner and anti-apartheid activist
