Unhealthy state of affairs: Nehawu members protest outside Bheki Mlangeni Hospital in Soweto last week. Photo: Fani Mahuntsi/Gallo Images
Government negotiators and public sector unions returned to the negotiating table on Thursday after nearly a week of increasingly violent disruptions to hospitals and other government services.
This was as Health Minister Joe Phaahla announced that four people may have lost their lives because of the strike at public hospitals around the country, many of which had been blockaded by workers belonging to the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) who went on an indefinite strike on Monday.
Hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, the Eastern Cape, North West and Western Cape have been particularly badly affected.
Nehawu general secretary Zola Sapetha confirmed the union was participating in the talks, facilitated by the Public Service Coordinating Bargaining Council, to try to break the deadlock.
“We will be returning to the negotiating table because we believe a facilitated process should help us find a different outcome from the current impasse,” Sapetha said.
“What we draw strength from going into this meeting is the hope that a solution can come from somewhere. There is at least some commitment to find a better way of resolving this situation we find ourselves in.”
The Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union, the South African Policing Union and the National Union of Public Service and Allied Workers have all served the department of public service and administration with strike notices.
Bargaining council general secretary Frikkie de Bruin said it believed the parties needed to go back to table because of the level of violence in the strike, the effect on public services and the need to address worker grievances.
“The situation remains untenable, with no clear plan on how to navigate and move past the current impasse,” De Bruin said.
By Thursday afternoon, Nehawu’s Western Cape provincial secretary, Baxolise Mali, could not confirm when the protests would end.
He said his comments in an address to striking members on Wednesday had been misinterpreted after nonprofit news agency GroundUp quoted him as saying: “The employer says people are dying. It is not our responsibility to keep people’s lives.”
“All we said is that it is not correct to say [when] someone dies it is because of the Nehawu strike, because people normally die. Nehawu has no powers to decide who must die and who must live,” he told the Mail & Guardian.
On Tuesday, striking workers in the Western Cape blocked staff from entering Khayelitsha District Hospital and nearby Michael Mapongwana Clinic.
The protests continued on Wednesday, said the deputy director of communications at the Western Cape department of health and wellness, Mark van der Heever aid.
“Although the buildings are not damaged, the protest has resulted in the transferring of critical patients to other facilities such as Helderberg, Tygerberg, Mitchells Plain and Karl Bremer Hospitals,” he said.
The health department’s Abulele Dyasi confirmed that 45 critical patients had to be transferred.
On Thursday morning, a fresh crowd of health and social workers briefly gathered outside the Khayelitsha District Hospital, amid a strong police presence. Police vehicles escorted ambulances leaving the hospital’s emergency area. Some of the protesters told the M&G their wages had not increased since 2019.
Van der Heever said plans were in place to ensure health services continued in affected areas and that the provincial government was preparing for an urgent application to interdict Nehawu’s strike.
A doctor at a hospital in North West, who asked not to be named, said they had been forced to operate on only the most urgent cases because of a lack of theatre staff, while patients with colostomies and other conditions had been left unattended.
“Protest started on Monday. It was absolute chaos. We were blocked at the gate. They were restricting the number of doctors going in to one per ward,” the doctor said.
Unhealthy state of affairs: Nehawu members protest outside Bheki Mlangeni Hospital in Soweto on Wednesday. Photo: Fani Mahuntsi/Gallo Images
“There were no nurses in any of the wards. The only place where there were nurses was the ICU and there it was only a couple. Urine bags weren’t changed. Patients’ colostomy bags had exploded. We had to mop up and clean them.”
The doctor said that most of the nurses had returned to work by Thursday, while military staff had been brought in to assist, adding: “It’s not back to normal but at least there are hands now.”
Nurses at Thelle Mogoerane Hospital in Vosloorus, Ekurhuleni — which services surrounding areas including Thokoza and Katlehong, the third-biggest township in South Africa by population — have been working 24-hour shifts since Monday because of the “limited hands” available to assist patients.
When the M&G visited Thelle Mogoerane on Thursday, workers aligned to Nehawu were preventing anyone from entering and exiting the hospital in line with their union’s directive to disrupt services.
“When I left the hospital [on Wednesday], I thanked God because it was a risk for me to be working while Nehawu people have been threatening to kill us and patients,” said one nurse who is not a Nehawu member.
“My shift began on Tuesday at 7am and I could only leave [on Wednesday] because there are limited hands available to assist patients inside.
“I don’t think I’m going to go back this week, hard as that is for me to say, because Nehawu people are now going inside the hospital to flush out people they call amagundwane (rats — a derogatory term used by unions to describe non-striking workers.)
Another nurse said it was “dangerous to go to work when the guys say they will burn our cars and kill us for helping needy patients”.
Police unions said services would not be affected by a planned “indefinite” strike on 17 March but support staff would not be available to help the public when officers took to the picket lines.
Sapu national spokesperson Lesiba Thobakgale confirmed on Thursday that its 82 000 members would down tools to press for a 10% wage increase.
“It is an indefinite strike. Members are aware that they will have to take some pain during the strike [because of no work, no pay]. But it is something all members are aware of for the greater good because the cost of living is too high,” Thobakgale told the M&G.
He added that Sapu was aware that police workers were designated as essential services workers, in line with section 70 of the Labour Relations Act, and that police officers on duty would honour their shifts. However, service workers, such as clerks, supply-chain officers and security officials, would down tools.
Thobakgale said 32 000 of Sapu’s members were not regulated by the Act and were not classed as essential workers, reiterating: “So, all police officers will honour their shifts and join us on the picket lines once their shifts conclude. Police services will not be affected.”
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