She would leave her home in the Natal township at 5am for King Edward Hospital, stand in interminable queues before being treated, and get home, exhausted, late in the afternoon. On Wednesday she rose just before Sam, and barely two hours later was being treated at the whites-only Addington Hospital, reports Carmel Rickard.
It was a pleasant change: so mud so that she has no intention of going back to the much-less-convenient King Edward. As a result of her participation in the ”mass democratic movement’s” campaign of defiance against segregated facilities, Khumalo has decided to get her medical care where it’s closest and quickest. ”I’ll demand to be treated here,” she said. ”I think I have a right, as a South African, to use any hospital.” Hers was one of many hundreds of such acts of defiance by black patients in the Transvaal and Natal on the first day of the MDM campaign, and it symbolises the blow delivered to one of apartheid’s softest spots¬ the discriminatory provision of medical care.
MDM leaders say white hospitals will never be the same after this week’s action; that the enforced bending of the law has established a principle for the future. The peaceful and orderly protest at eight hospitals in the two provinces was certainly a major propaganda success for the agglomeration of anti-apartheid organisations which go to make up the MDM. It passed off peacefully, despite doomsday predictions from Minister of Law and Order Adriaan Vlok about ”incitement to violence”. This indicates a residual capacity among anti-apartheid groups for the disci¬plined mobilisation of ordinary township residents. This fact is made all the more important, according to MDM leader Murphy Morobe, as the campaign was undertaken despite the strictures of the State of Emergency, which severely curtails organisational activity. The considerable international impact of the campaign was boosted by the decision of diplomats from some foreign embassies, including the United States and Australia, to visit the targeted hospitals as observers.
Two question marks remain, however, over the long-term effects of the day of action. The first is whether the beachhead achieved at the hospitals can be maintained. It is clear that both the police and hospital authorities were under instructions to be accommodating. This will not necessarily be the case when blacks turn up in an ad hoc fashion in future, without the attendant publicity of the focused campaign. The second question is whether the tremendous momentum engendered by the hospital protest can be replicated in actions against other aspects of apartheid society: medical care is an especially emotive issue, striking chords on purely human rights grounds among those who would otherwise have no sympathy with civil disobedience campaigns. Allied to this is the extent to which township residents can be expected to participate in day-to-day protests which are scheduled to continue until and beyond the September elections.
On the first issue, it is noteworthy that most of the black patients who were admitted for treatment were not given patient appointment cards, which officially clear the way for return visits. The senior medical superintendent, of Addington Hospital, Patrick Fitzgerald, said the decision to treat ”non-emergency” African and Indian outpatients on Wednesday was ”an exception” because of the publicity giv¬en to the planned protest. He said the situation would now re¬vert to ”normal”, meaning that black outpatients would be screened to en¬sure they were not seriously ill and, if they weren’t, would be ”transferred”. Dr Reg Broekman, superintendent of Johannesburg Hospital, confirmed that a decision had been taken to be, ”flexible” in ”this kind of situation”.
The second issue, of where the campaign can be taken from here, is t concentrating the minds of MDM – leaders. Certainly there are opportunities for further initiatives around medical issues (such as the fact that black – nurses at some white hospitals are not – permitted to live in ”white” nurses’ residences), but it will have to be extended into other areas. Black schools present themselves as – an obvious option, but it is not guaranteed that the tactics of Wednesday will produce the same results. Finally, although Wednesday’s turnout was greatly encouraging for the MDM, it was patchy and regional, with little activity reported from the Orange Free State, and initiatives in the Cape taking different forms from those in the Transvaal and Natal. However, the call for defiance was heeded right across the country.
- The most successful protest occurred at Addington Hospital in Durban, where 171 black patients presented themselves, accompanied by as many as 2 000 supporters. Addressing the protesters at noon on Wednesday, National Medical and Dental Association President Diliza Mji said a victory had been won, as for the first time in Addington’s history African and Indian patients who were not emergency cases had been treated. He acknowledged that the hospital had opened a separate section to deal with the protesting patients but vowed: ”We will be back”. He asked the crowd not to toyi-toyi or sing as they waited for buses to take them home and they complied, standing in silence for 30 minutes. Some protesters held banners saying ”Apartheid is the disease” and ”Germs don’t discriminate”. At a subsequent news conference, Natal MDM leaders announced a ”Nearest Hospital Campaign”, whereby patients would choose hospitals according to convenience. Natal Provincial Administration officials said an MDM delegation had arrived at Port Shepstone hospital and met the superintendent. No incident were reported at Grey’s hospital.
Philippa Garson reports that in the Transvaal, protesters appeared at several hospitals. More than 50 presented themselves at Johannesburg Hospital in what Dr Aslam Dadoo of the South African Health Workers’ Association described as a ”most successful” start to the campaign. ”As of today,” he said, ”the MDM considers all health facilities in this country open to all race groups.” Many protesters interviewed said they were at Johannesburg Hospital because medical staff at Baragwanath was too overstretched to give them sufficient attention.
Audrey Brown reports that at Paardekraal in Krugersdorp a handful of black patients were admitted after a larger group was initially turned away. However, a delegation of top¬ level MDM leaders, including the Congress of South African Trade Unions’ Jay Naidoo, Sydney Mufamadi and Chris Dlamini, along with the United Democratic Front’s Mohammed Valli, were invited in to the hospital to meet the administrators. After the meeting, Naidoo said he had not been satisfied with the answers given to questions about segre¬gated services. Naidoo objected, in particular, to the proximity of security force members which, he said, made it ”impossible” for sick black people to enter the hospital freely. However members of the Mohlakeng Youth Congress, three of whom succeeded in getting treatment, said ”we now consider this hospital open and we will encourage the sick people in the townships to present them¬ selves here for treatment”.
Thandeka Gqubule reports that at the HF Verwoerd Hospital in Pretoria, police staged roadblocks at two entrances and allegedly searched vehicles, but some 15 activists gained entrance and were received by hospital authorities.
In Welkom in the Orange Free State, a small group of African patients was also admitted.
Gaye Davis reports that the defiance campaign in the Western Cape took a different form from the rest of the country, but was dramatic nevertheless. Eighteen former detainees openly defied their restriction orders by appearing at a press conference in Cape Town as part of the peaceful protest campaign. They included almost the entire leadership of the UDF in the Western Cape as well as key members of affiliate organisations. Planned non-violent actions announced simultaneously included protests and rallies, culminating in a week of ”mass action” from September 1 to 6, during which there will be a march from Mitchells Plain to Cape Town. Restricted organisations announced a plan to declare themselves ”unbanned” at a rally marking the UDF’s birthday on August 20, while joint protests by students and teachers at universities, training colleges and schools are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday next week.
The press conference followed a morning of protest action by students at high schools in Mitchells Plain, where barricades burned and teargas canisters popped for the second week running. Students as well as teachers from many of the township’s high schools were turned back by police when they attempted to stage marches on the of flees of the Department of Education and Culture in the (Coloured) House of Representatives in the Mitchells Plain town centre. They were demanding the release of seven students detained during the past two weeks and the dropping of public violence charges against some students. Soon after the marching students were turned back, police visited a number of schools where students had regrouped and ordered them to go home. Three key members of the Western Cape Schools Congress were arrested by police in Belhar.
Tomorrow’s funeral in Athlone for Coline Williams and Robbie Waterwitch, the two activists whose mutilated bodies were found at the scene of the first of a series of blasts which rocked the Peninsula a fortnight ago, is being regarded as a key event in the planned programme of action. Police this week meet the committee arranging the funeral. Sources said a high-ranking police officer asked for details of the route of the funeral procession and said he ”did not want to interfere” with the funeral.
Also on this weekend’s agenda are’ planned visits to Groote Schuur Hospital, where veteran trade unionist and former Western Cape UDF president Oscar Mpetha will be celebrating his 80th birthday. Attorney Essa Moosa said all the activities should be seen in the context of a peaceful programme of non-violent mass action, directed against apartheid laws and ”addressing the immediate needs of our people. ”We are saying we can no longer jail ourselves, nor accept segregation and racial division, nor stand silent in the face of the crushing economic problems of the mass of our people,” he said.
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
