Limpopo Health MEC Dr Phophi Ramathuba.
LIMPOPO MEC for Health Phophi Ramathuba's attitude is unsurprising and represents the ANC's understanding of Africa's social and political problems.
This is according to Dr Metjie Makgoba, an independent analyst and senior lecturer at the University of Limpopo, who weighed in on Ramathuba’s controversial video about illegal immigrants and health-care services that set tongues wagging.
In the video, Ramathuba bemoans the influx of illegal immigrants to the country that is overwhelming and suffocating the health-care system at the expense of South African citizens who suffer as a result of the health-care services shortage.
Suggesting immigrants needed to pay for such services – because all hospitals in Limpopo were now forced to provide beds to foreigners, which angered the community – Ramathuba asserted that Zimbabwean president Emmerson Munangagwa should assist in this regard.
Makgoba blamed the governing party which deployed Ramathuba, saying he felt emotional outbursts could never be the government's response to the crises in public health in Limpopo.
“The ANC does not understand the notion of political responsibility that deals with power and institutional context, and tends to limit and conceive (of) political problems through the angle of personal or individual responsibility, ignoring how historical context and power relations continue to shape how we exist.
“Because of this wider misunderstanding in the ANC, their politics is always nudging to the right, because the larger context of power and the functions of major economic, social and cultural institutions are ignored to favour the individual actions of people who are positioned by the same power.
“By turning political issues that require state-to-state co-operation into individual problems, she is merely fertilising xenophobic sentiments without coming up with political solutions that benefit South Africans,” he said.
Makgoba said political leaders and ordinary citizens could not handle political issues in the same way because leaders had access to state power and resources in ways ordinary citizens did not.
“We should be worried that people who are running public institutions act (as if they are) powerless and helpless, and resort to pettiness and populist tactics that attract temporary attention, when they could deeply diagnose social and economic problems and ask different government agencies to address these problems in a co-ordinated way.”
Award-winning Zimbabwean journalist Hopewell Chin’ono has joined hundreds of South Africans in saying he felt the Limpopo MEC for Health was justified in speaking about the impact of foreign nationals on public hospitals.
Following Ramathuba’s complaint, Arundel Hospital in Harare offered to settle the outstanding bill for the illegal immigrants.
Although the Department of Health denounced the tone used by the MEC, Deputy Health Minister Sibongiseni Dhlomo, speaking on Thursday during an interview on eNCA, said demand for local health services showed the system was not as broken as many claimed it was.
He said the country needed to discuss the matter at a policy level and determine how it could be harmonised across all the SADC countries.
"We do not have the accurate figures, but that does not mean it is a false perception. Real doctors who treat those patients across Limpopo and Gauteng can give you the stats," he said.
"I'm saying that is not a perception – it is actually true. There are patients all over the SADC who seek better health care elsewhere,” he stated.
The issue of undocumented immigrants entering the country illegally has caused tensions in some communities where people feel locals and undocumented foreigners are competing for limited public services.