Special Hearings — Health Sector Hearings — 1997-06-18

UNKNOWN: Well there are two ways of looking at it.  Firstly the question of us not being a statutory body and then obviously it would be the Medical and Dental Council which should look after the interests of the soldiers in the army and others within the army to see that their rights were respected despite the fact that they happen to be part of the military, and to take any action that might be necessary.  And certainly as an Association and if we were aware, obviously aware of any discrimination of any sort within the army, well then we should have taken it up.  But Dr Hanekom may have a little more information from the point of his being the secretary general and had a more close relationship with those in the army. Possibly he may want to answer differently.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Yes thank you.

HENDRIK ANDRIES HANEKOM: Thank you Dr Mandell.   Commissioner although there's no formal relationship, there is on the one Committee of the Medical Association, the committee for fulltime practice there is a fulltime representative from the South African Medical Services, representing the military doctors on that specific committee.  That committee deals more with terms and conditions of service.  There's always been, although not a formal relationship, a very open relationship between the Medical Association and the South African Medical Services, always when there were specific problems and I can't remember the specific dates but there were at one stage quite a few problems.  Doctors had certain problems, they approached us, we then approached the Surgeon General or his office and I must say that most, at that stage it wasn't specifically about human rights issues but problems that people experienced or people that couldn't, were called up for service, that couldn't, because of family reasons, we had a very open relationship and I can't think of one opportunity when we had to go to the military that they didn't do what they could, but we didn't have any specific, human rights-specific issues that we took to the military.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Yes, Dr Barker.

EDWARD BARKER: There is something that I want to say also in reply to your question, Madam Commissioner and that is again to draw your attention to the fact that it was a slow process.  The move of the Association to an awareness of its responsibility in terms of human rights, in terms of its social responsibility, its responsibility for the welfare of the community rather than the welfare of doctors, and it was really a slow development and certainly very recently only have we started to be proactive rather than just reactive to matters of ethics and human rights and that sort of thing. We now are an Association that has a large part of our activities devoted in this direction, but this is a very recent development.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: I had in mind the submission yesterday by a person who was in the military, who was a military medic.  I don't know if you were here yesterday, who told us about the training of a military medic which clearly illustrates a violation of human rights and a violation of medical ethics, where they were trained or they practised, as you said, on Black patients in Tembisa and another hospital, I think it's Attridgeville, and that really was what I had in mind and I wondered if those are the issues on which you would exercise your pro-activeness in just investigating, having heard of how things are done?

EDWARD BARKER: Madam Chair, I would say I was here yesterday and I heard the submission and being just a member of the audience I was not able to comment, but I do know that all paramedic personnel, whether they be in the ambulance services, whether they be within the hospitals, whether they be in the military, whatever, all paramedical people including nurses undergo training in simple wound management in all the hospitals, Black, White wherever.  Every hospital where I have ever been, in the casualty department have been students, medical students, nurses and paramedics of all sorts, including military medics, not practising, who are being trained.  Their subjects, victims if you like, have been patients of all races in all hospitals. And I really mean this in every hospital I've worked in.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: So just for the record so it is incorrect to claim that the practice or the training of these medics at  the Black hospitals has anything to do with the colour of the patient, it's incorrect?

EDWARD BARKER: I didn't regard that as a violation, no.

MS GOBODO-MADIKIZELA: Okay thank you.

UNKNOWN: Gentlemen, I'm allowed one question and I'll try and ask this question quite quickly. I can't resist asking whether MASA had any relationship with the Broederbond and if so, what kind of relationship there was?

EDWARD BARKER: The answer to that is in terms of what we know, no, the Association as such certainly had nothing to do with the Broederbond in any way whatsoever.  However, it remains my strong conviction that the relationship that I spoke about earlier, which I personally found quite, quite wrong way back at the time between the leading members of the Medical Association, the leaders of the Association, the people who really sort of set the tone, set the policies, persuaded the membership to come in this or that direction, the relationship between those people, between the heads of the SAMDC and between the people in the Department of Health particularly and other areas of government, particularly this I have no doubt the Security Police as well, my own belief, and it is completely unsubstantiated, was that that was based upon Broederbond membership.  This is something which I can only say was an opinion which I held and I have no evidence for it.

UNKNOWN: Thank you very much.

MS MKHIZE: Just one question from me. I was just going through your document, looking at your section where you talk about MASA and human rights violations, looking at different paragraphs, to me it sounded like a very difficult position to comprehend as to exactly what is your position.  In some section you talk about MASA has not committed gross human rights violations, and in others you look at the different degrees of conspiracy, complicity, and even of human rights violations,  MASA was not any time directly involved in conspiracy or complicity.  There are different sections where one picks up this contradiction as to what exactly is your position.
 My specific question is that under this section where we look at MASA and human rights violations, in view of the fact that we are at the phase where we're all working towards transformation but the essential stage is the establishment of the truth, I would have liked a document where you have made a careful assessment of what went wrong and actually documented, as a vehicle for transforming this professional grouping, and I think that would be very, very important in view of the documents whereby other organisations like NAMDA and other progressive structures actually embarked on a campaign internationally that MASA be one of those professional bodies who should be isolated.  So I'm just looking for your position where you think things went wrong.