S'THEMBISO MSOMI | Austerity measures threaten the lives of civil servants, spend on infrastructure development

I don’t know whether the editors of this newspaper did it intentionally, but the two headlines on the front page of Sowetan’s Friday edition spoke to each other even though they were in reference to two separate stories.

The first headline – “Dead intern doctor ‘denied’ sick leave” – related to a tragic story of Dr Alulutho Mazwi, a young medic who collapsed on duty and later died after his manager at a public hospital had turned down his request to take time off due to illness.

The second – “The poor to be victims of Enoch’s austerity budget” – refers to a column penned by the editor, Sibongakonke Shoba, preparing us for the massive cuts in public spending that would have to be announced by the finance minister [Enoch Godongwana] when he makes his third attempt at delivering a budget acceptable to the majority of MPs this week.

Dr Mazwi’s story is painful, but one that, unfortunately, many of those employed would identify with in these times of job cuts and staff shortages – especially in the public sector. The 25-year-old was a medical intern at Prince Mshiyeni Memorial Hospital in uMlazi, south of Durban, a busy public health facility catering for most of the city’s most populous township.

Mazwi, who was diabetic, messaged his boss one morning to say he was not feeling well and would not be making it to work before apologising for the “inconvenience” his absence was causing to their medical team. The response from his boss was terse and bothering on threatening: "I expect you to be on duty.”

It is the publication of these exchanges on social media that have sparked widespread protests and calls for investigations into whether the ill-treatment of staff at this particular hospital may have led to Mazwi’s death.

Speaking to Sowetan, Mazwi’s uncle, Vumani, said even though the family could see that their doctor son was unwell, there was little they could do as he insisted on going back to work, presumably because of pressure.

His mother had to drive him from Mthatha, in the Eastern Cape, to Durban as he couldn’t drive himself.

Much of the public anger and protest has been directed to Mazwi’s manager and the hospital and – given that the manager happens to be a South African of Asian heritage – some of the protests have taken a racialised slant.

While indeed a probe has to be conducted into whether a toxic employer-employee environment at the hospital may have resulted in the life of the young doctor being cut short and whether other staff members are being mistreated, as claimed by one of the unions, we should not lose sight of the main source of the problem.

Ideally, a hospital should not become so reliant on interns so much that when they cannot make it to work, the whole system falls apart. Whilst we are yet to know the full details of this particular case, it is common knowledge that public hospitals are buckling under the pressure of staff shortages and inadequate resources.

It may very well be that, unable to hire more doctors and other medical staff, the hospital and its managers have been forced to lean heavily on interns such as Mazwi, demanding of them what they should not be demanding even of their full-time staff.

Although staff shortages in the public sector, especially in institutions that cater for black people, have always been the reality, the situation has worsened over the past decade due largely to depressed economic conditions that have forced the government to resort to austerity measures.

Unfortunately for the poor, if Shoba’s warning in his column is anything to go by, the situation is unlikely to change soon.

In February, the anger over Godongwana’s proposed two percentage points increase in VAT was lessened a bit, at least among some, by the announcement of an increase in public health, education and social development budget.

While we all agreed that a VAT increase was regressive and would hurt the poor the most, the push against the rise should have been accompanied by a serious debate on where else to find the R75bn shortfall that the minister said would be created.

Instead, what we seem to have ended with is a budget that is without the offending increases – hence one that is sellable in parliament – but which still leave the poor more vulnerable.

Since the attainment of political freedom, the democratic dividend has been much for the formerly oppressed who had hoped that liberation would see their standard of living being dramatically improved.

But at least the one thing our young democracy was able to do in the first 15 years of freedom was an increase in the provision of basic services that were previously denied to the majority. Hospitals such as Mshiyeni remarkably improved, sometimes even performing better than their public sector counterparts in the cities.

But austerity measures are now threatening all of those gains.  

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