They arrived in Cuba with a suitcase and returned to SA as doctors. We followed 5 to see where they work today

There is an obscure significance to Mzulungile Nodikida’s appointment as CEO of the South African Medical Association (Sama) in January this year, and it derives from Nodikida being a product of the South African government’s Cuban Medical Training Programme, sometimes called the Nelson Mandela–Fidel Castro collaboration.

Since its establishment in 1996, the programme has been knocked for being impractical, too expensive, and for producing inferior doctors. In a 2013 South African Medical Journal article, Sama’s then vice chairperson, Mark Sonderup, is quoted as saying, “[e]verybody agrees we need more doctors, but is this the best we can do?”

Nodikida now leads Sama, and he isn’t the only Cuba graduate who has accessed power and influence in South Africa’s healthcare sector…..more