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Letter of the President
31 August , 2007
True heroines & heroes - our health workers
Not long ago, our Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, underwent a highly successful liver transplant operation carried out by surgeons at the public health Johannesburg General Hospital. This has succeeded to restore her to full health and enable her to resume her public duties.
On behalf of our movement, the ANC, in all humility, I would like to thank all the surgeons, the physicians, the technicians, the nurses and the general staff at the Johannesburg General Hospital for everything they did which has made it possible for a tried and tested cadre of our movement, a true and devoted servant of the masses of our people, to resume her place in the frontline of the noble struggle to build ours into a caring and people-centred society.
Excellent medical practice
Some among the highest qualified and experienced medical practitioners in our country have communicated the important message that the success achieved by the doctors and staff at the Johannesburg General Hospital is a bright star that shines as an outstanding achievement in the practice of medicine throughout the world.
Contrary to the false and negative propaganda that some have striven very hard to propagate in this regard, we should, as a nation, celebrate a brilliant achievement of our medical practitioners which, anywhere else in the world, would be acclaimed and promoted as cause for the open expression of genuinely unqualified national pride.
This relates to the success of the delicate and complex operation to accomplish the liver transplant, the post-operation hospital care, and the attendant full recovery of the patient in a relatively short time, especially in the light of her age. It also relates to the professionalism of the heroes and heroines at Johannesburg General Hospital, who have resisted the contemporary disease to market and popularise themselves through the media as the outstanding achievers they actually are, instead responding in a dignified and appropriate manner to the unprincipled attacks unjustly levelled against them.
All this confirmed both the excellence of our medical workers at all levels, and the unquestionable professional competence within our public health system, driven by unwavering devotion to the ethics that attach to the practice of medicine. It also demonstrated the unqualified confidence of our political leader in the area of health, the Minister of Health, in the capacity of our public health system, as a consequence of which, when need arose, she entrusted her life to the members of the Johannesburg General Hospital.
The values of ubuntu
I was born and grew up in a culture steeped in the ubuntu value system. Among other things, this culture valued and values the sanctity of human life. In this culture, one of the expressions used to convey thanks to an individual for doing good things says - ukhule, ukhokhobe! - may you grow old until your back bends, as befits the truly elderly!
Translated into the English language this means - we wish you a long life! Accordingly, the value system that has informed my world view has always taught all of us that the ill health experienced by anybody is cause for common concern.
Our traditional greeting system, as in other cultures, includes the formal inquiry - how is your health?, how were you when the sun set? - which enables the interlocutor in fact, and legitimately, to talk about his or her health and the relevant social conditions, which many of our older people do, to this day.
However, the hospitalisation of our Minister of Health will have taught us that our value system is changing towards an ugly and inhumane direction. In this regard, views were expressed and a campaign waged essentially to convey the brutal message that everybody concerned, including the doctors who treated her, should have allowed Manto Tshabalala-Msimang to die.
Various propositions were advanced in this regard by and through the media. One of these was that the Johannesburg General Hospital carried out the liver transplant when it did because I, as President of the Republic, had obliged the hospital to do so. Alternatively, the hospital had treated her as a priority patient, because she is the Minister of Health.
Consequently, as another proposition, allegedly the doctors at the hospital had compromised all ethical medical principles to enable Manto Tshabalala-Msimang to jump the queue, displacing other patients who should have been treated first.
The unadorned truth is that the allegation about our intervention with the Johannesburg General Hospital was entirely false. Similarly, the accusation that the doctors at this hospital had given preference to the Minister of Health, ahead of other and waiting patients, responding to our pressure, was also a complete fabrication. Equally, the suggestion that, unprompted, the hospital unethically broke some rules, to enable itself to admit the Minister of Health as a priority patient, is an unadulterated concoction.
It is obvious that those who deliberately manufactured and peddled these lies did so to argue that Manto Tshabalala-Msimang should not have been treated, and should have been allowed to suffer and die. They were enraged that the Johannesburg General Hospital saved her life, whereas they wished and wish that her health condition should and could have been allowed to kill her.
Clearly, there is something radically wrong within our society, that anybody could have the audacity publicly to argue that nothing should have been done to attend to the health of another South African human being, allowing her to die instead, as some in our society have argued with brazen assurance.
Shining through, and mediating all this horrible, frightening and anti-human experience is both the outstanding excellence of our compatriots, the medical workers and the administration at the Johannesburg General Hospital, and the dignity which Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, her husband and children have displayed in the face of a sustained and merciless propaganda assault, bereft of all sense of humane feeling and human solidarity.
Some in our society, and elsewhere in the world, seem determined to applaud this truly frightening behaviour, which, in reality, belongs to wild animals, celebrating it as an excellent example of the true meaning and expression of the democracy for which Manto Tshabalala-Msimang fought throughout her life.
Cadres of the revolution
I knew her and of her more than 45 years ago, when she was a student at Fort Hare and a member of the ANC Youth League. I went into exile with her, in 1962, when we, young adherents of the ANC and militants of the national liberation movement, obeyed the command of the ANC to go abroad to study, which was conveyed to me personally by Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki and Duma Nokwe.
In exile I served in the leadership of the then ANC Youth and Student Section, part of whose task was to ensure that those of us deployed as students, to acquire qualifications that liberated South Africa would need, honoured our obligation to equip ourselves with knowledge. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang (neé Mali), together with the rest of the ANC students in the Soviet Union, where she qualified as a medical doctor, faithfully carried out the mission our movement had given to our students.
On completion of her studies, like many of her ANC Youth League and student colleagues, she returned to Africa to serve the ANC and our people, in exile and at home. Among others, the ANC deployed her in Botswana, Tanzania and Angola in various capacities, to advance the struggle and serve the people of South Africa.
In our tradition as the ANC we do not normally celebrate our heroes and heroines publicly, such as Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, until they have died. This is based on the understanding that all those who join the ANC and therefore our continuing struggle, have a duty to promote and defend the ANC and the struggle it leads. There is therefore no need to acclaim members of the ANC simply because they act as true, rather than paper members of our movement.
Violating this tradition, I have now written about Manto Tshabalala-Msimang as I have because some, at home and abroad, who did nothing or very little to contribute to the immensely difficult and costly struggle to achieve our liberation, have chosen to sit as judges over who she is, what she has done for the welfare of our nation, and what she represents, today, with regard to the pursuit of the goal of a better life for all our people.
All genuine members of our movement are greatly inspired and moved that the ANC, our struggle and people have, for fifty years, had the support, involvement and dedication of Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. It is because of her and other cadres like her, including her contemporaries, members of the Mkhonto we Sizwe Luthuli Detachment, that the ANC has lived to celebrate its 95th anniversary, as it did on January 8th this year.
Equally, we are greatly inspired and moved that there are many, professionals within the profession she chose, medical care, who, whether they know her or not, are, in practice, following in her footsteps in terms of their commitment to serve the people of South Africa.
A genuine patriot - Johannes Dreyer van Niekerk
Among these are those who took her life into their hands at the Johannesburg General Hospital. Also among these is another medical doctor, whom almost all South Africans have never heard of, Johannes Dreyer van Niekerk.
Dr JD van Niekerk works in a public health hospital in Nababeep, Namaqua District in the Northern Cape. He was born and grew up in this district. The doctor is a specialist in Internal Medicine and worked at the Kimberley Hospital Complex (KHC) as a Principal Specialist and Head of Cardiology.
Visits he made to Namaqua in his adult years convinced him that the best way for him to put his professional expertise to the people most in need of his services would be to relocate from the provincial capital, Kimberley, to the district of his birth, Namaqua. In good measure, his resolve in this regard was driven by his deep-seated devotion to the Christian faith and its humane prescriptions.
Naturally, the Kimberley Hospital Complex management was unhappy that it would lose its Principal Specialist in Internal Medicine and resisted his departure. When it was finally agreed that Dr van Niekerk could move to Nababeep, he had to confront the reality that he would lose his status as Principal Specialist and could not even be given a position either as a senior specialist or a specialist. At Nababeep he would be paid as a Chief Medical Officer, which would entail a significant salary reduction.
Nevertheless Dr van Niekerk was determined to leave Kimberley, the better to serve the poor of our country. He therefore accepted the salary cut. He found later that fortunately, his remuneration remained the same as in Kimberley, thanks to the rural allowance provided by the Department of Health and lower tax obligations.
Dr van Niekerk opened his Nababeep Specialist Clinic on 15 January this year. Operating from the public health hospitals at Nababeep and Springbok, he is providing excellent service in Internal Medicine to the entire population of the Namaqua District. This makes it unnecessary for Dr van Niekerk's patients in this District to undertake the 800km journey to reach the referral Kimberley Hospital Complex.
In this regard, Dr van Niekerk has written: "I strive to deliver a one stop service wherever possible, doing all the examinations within the first consultation to arrive at a final diagnosis and the appropriate correct treatment. When the patients leave my clinic they are well informed, motivated, and take back with them a letter to their referring doctors and clinics to put in their files. Ambulances transport the patients from all over this vast district to our clinic.
"In this way 1st world medicine has arrived at the doorstep of the poor and underprivileged people of Namaqua. Even traditional shepherds have access now to almost the best of first world medicine." (In addition, Dr van Niekerk is acting as a tutor or mentor to junior doctors and other health personnel in Namaqua to improve their capacity to attend to the health of our people.)
To do his work Dr van Niekerk required various equipment, staff, and the necessary premises both for the clinic and his residence. When she was approached, the Premier of the Northern Cape, Dipuo Peters, understood the need urgently to supply the required equipment. She therefore found the necessary resources, outside the health budget, which had been exhausted, to supply some of the equipment that Dr van Niekerk requires.
Remarkably, Dr van Niekerk also used a substantial portion of his own savings to obtain other equipment. In addition, because Nababeep Hospital had not budgeted for these posts during the current financial year, he has used and is using his own savings to pay for the receptionist and nursing sister he needs to run the Clinic and carry out his overall work!
Champions of the goal - health for all
Dr van Niekerk has also written: "My vision for the District of Namaqua is to establish a Diagnostic Training Centre. Here doctors can enter a course of special training in applied Internal Medicine, using modern apparatus like sonar, fibre-optic scopes, treadmills and different biopsy techniques...The question remains whether other specialists like myself will venture to do the same as I did. I was and is driven by a vision and by passion. I believe we must at least create the best circumstances we can in our hospitals, and then invite them...some will respond!"
Some in our country are determined to communicate the most negative stories about our country, essentially to entrench the false understanding that ours is a democracy in crisis, offering no hope to the masses of our people. They do this to pursue a political agenda driven by a single-minded determination to ensure that they, rather than our movement, determine the future of our country, in their interest.
For this reason, they will continue to hide from our people the excellence of world standard, demonstrated by the surgeons, physicians, technicians, nurses and staff at the public health Johannesburg General Hospital who cooperated to carry our Minister Tshabalala-Msimang's liver transplant and restore her to full health in a relatively short time.
They will continue to deprive our people of all knowledge about a truly remarkable South African, Dr Johannes Dreyer van Niekerk, a doctor in our public health system, who continues to show all of us what it means to be committed to serve all our people, and what the Afrikaner people are doing, working with other South Africans, to contribute to the achievement of the goal of a better life for all our people.
They will continue to do their best to denigrate a principled fighter for a democratic, non-racial and non-sexist South Africa, who has dedicated her entire life to the achievement of this outcome, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, whom history will honour as one of the pioneer architects of a South African public health system constructed to ensure that we achieve the objective of health for all our people, and especially the poor.
About Dr van Niekerk, Northern Cape Premier Dipuo Peters, has said: "Dr JD van Niekerk is one breed of rare South African doctors who is not driven by money but by the need to serve the people of his country, and that informed his decision to relocate to Namakwa rather than to emigrate to Canada or Australia. Instead of 'greener pastures', he looked for the floral carpet and starlit sky of Namakwa where diamond magnates and sheep shepherds need his services."
As South Africans we have much to celebrate and emulate, especially the nobility of human spirit that inspires many of our people, both black and white, including those working in the health sector. We will not allow that those with other agendas succeed to deny us the possibility to celebrate and emulate the example set by our genuine heroes and heroines.
This page was last updated on Friday August 31, 2007