A collective of doctors from across South Africa has lambasted the South African Medical Association Trade Union (Samatu) for failing to represent the interests of health professionals with many facing deteriorating working conditions.
The doctors, say their urgent call to Samatu to “confront the deepening crisis” in the health system has fallen on deaf ears as junior doctors continue to face mass unemployment, and public-sector clinicians struggle with resource constraints and excessive unpaid overtime hours.
On 26 May, 126 front-line doctors from more than 40 public and private healthcare institutions issued an open letter to Dr Cedric Sihlangu, general secretary of Samatu, calling for “real” action towards addressing an exploitative health system.
“You call for dialogue – but dialogue with whom? With the very state that, year after year, has frozen posts, looted budgets, outsourced dignity, and now discards its doctors like broken tools?” the letter stated.
“Let us speak plainly. What is happening in Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and everywhere else is not a technical oversight. It is the deliberate application of austerity in service of a political class that has no intention of delivering just, functional or universal healthcare. The goal is not to fix the system – it is to break it, hollow it out and contract it to the politically connected.” …..more
