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

UNKNOWN: Mr Chairman I would rather leave this question for Dr Wilson if he is going to have any opportunity to present because it would be a more honest reply.  I don't have enough first-hand knowledge.
 I would like to make a different point which may sound like an excuse but I think needs to be borne in mind and that is that the Faculty has no funding to deliver health services, in the same way that we do not employ any doctors and they are all employed by the Province.  All of the resources for delivering health care are provincial resources.  The Faculty is funded by the Department of Education to run some of the laboratories and lecture theatres and employ pre-clinical staff, which makes it very difficult to provide a sustainable health service which is obviously expensive and for which we have no funding.  
 The Alexandra Health Centre was funded by donor funds and the poor facilities you are describing are as much a reflection the inability to raise donor funds as they are a failure of the government to provide any primary care services to a community that it wished to consider illegal and not having a right to settle in a White area.  So that the whole reason for having a so-called university clinic or a clinic there at all was very much to perform a function which the government was refusing to perform for a community that clearly needed health services.  It had to be run out of funds that could be raised for that purpose and these, both the supervision and employment of doctors to supervise students, would all have been inadequate I believe because of the lack of resources.  
 I don't want to though let the Faculty of that time off the hook altogether.  It seems to me again that the contrast you are drawing is between the facilities available at a White Hospital not very far away, and the facilities in a Black Clinic and the faculty perhaps could have done something to get Black patients into the hospital, but the control of hospital services were under superintendents who were not joint appointees, have no accountability to the faculties and who at times called the police to keep our own staff out at times of protest.  So it's hard to know quite how they would have responded if there had been a concerted campaign. But I don't think there was a concerted campaign and so I think your point stands as a criticism of not doing enough to equalise the facilities and resources.

MAPULE RAMASHALA: Professors, the question I'm going to ask also relates to the next two submissions. UNDN and the University of Pretoria. There is something particularly problematic about these submissions, and I'm obviously prejudging the next two submissions.  You identify three categories of recommendations.   The teaching of ethics; respect for human dignity and creating a relationship with the State.
 I want to insist there is a fourth category and that is redress.  All White South Africans benefited from the apartheid opportunities.  I have not heard a single person, particularly institutional submissions, address the issue of redress.  I'm a Wits graduate, I knew that I could easily get through Wits because of my credentials, my grades.  Most people, most Black students who were admitted to Wits and UCT for that matter during my time could have made it anywhere.  So you essentially got the cream of the crop.  I consider the issue of missed opportunities as a gross human rights violation.  I have heard apologies all over South Africa about this and that but I've not heard a person saying - yes actually one citizen who is a home-maker who called our office to say I'd like to contribute to the Reparation Fund, but I think it is the responsibility of the academic institutions, not to look at what they do for students who are already admitted, but what to do with students who have missed out from the beginning.  I think you need to be more creative than that. I think you need to make a much more serious commitment because a student who's admitted into the Medical School or Wits in general, will make it.  What do the academic institutions propose to do to reach out to those students from the very beginning who won't even have a chance to be admitted? I hope you understand what I'm trying to say.
 There are very innovative ways of academic institutions who actually start with pre med, when I say pre med, I mean pre university courses in Science and you name it at the beginning.  I think it is a way for universities, all academic institutions to deal with the issue of redress and I sound passionate partly because I am angry at Wits.  I think it is very important to make that serious commitment and not to wait for students to be admitted to Wits.  Create that opportunity at the very bottom of the realm.   And having said that, I'd like to get your opinion on that.

CHAIRPERSON: Max I wonder if I could ask Hlengiwe also to pose a question then both of you can deal with those questions.

MS MKHIZE: Thank you Chairperson. Maybe before I ask you a question I would just like to read out something from Redress which is an organisation which is based in London and it is thrust is to seek reparation for survivors of Human Rights violations.  Basically they've written a letter and what they've said is that,
"I would like to express Redress support and encouragement for this process which we view as extremely timely and important".
Those are some of the messages we've got.   Coming to a specific question, yesterday we listened to a young man who is now a highly qualified doctor, Dr Ratamane who was talking about his experiences in one of the so-called open universities, actually not one, two of the so-called open universities. My specific question to you really is that over the years, the world even at the time when there were campaigns for academic boycotts, there were universities who were treated with exception, like Wits University will be one of them, but for the past two days, in our case including what is in our database we are living with this contradiction, almost being schizophrenic getting a progressive message which has got a stance against human rights violations and yet the reality as I've made an example of a person who is today a specialist who went through a difficult time in these institutions, one is left with nothing tangible which gives you a sense of hope that especially institutions of higher learning are lucky, even in future, to be a source of a different way of doing things as against the apartheid grand plan of creating a niche for certain categories of people.  Creating a situation where I would say at a certain point, maybe it became almost impossible for them to empathise. Because neglect of patient care, I still maintain is like a serious deficit where you cannot empathise with a person at a deeper level, who maybe you cannot relate to his whole world view or his creation as a person. So I would like to hear your views on that.