Marion Edmunds
THE government is to be urged to set up a special inquiry into district surgeons and health professionals who betrayed their ethical codes in complicity with apartheid authorities.
The call will be made at health hearings at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission next month and will come from among the 30 organisations making submissions, which include the Medical Association of South Africa (Masa) and the Interim Medical and Dental Council of South Africa.
While Masa has submitted a lengthy document to the truth commission, it has failed to call for further inquiries into the past. It says it is satisfied with an apology made in 1995, in which all health professionals were implicated for not doing enough to challenge the government of the day, but none were singled out for unethical behaviour.
According to Masa’s president, Professor Bernard Mandell, the organisation does not have the resources to conduct a deeper investigation. He said that Masa had encouraged doctors to apply for amnesty if they were guilty of violating human rights, and Masa’s archives were offered to the TRC.
“I don’t know how doctors are going to react to these hearings,” he said this week. “At the moment we are working on unity within the profession and those doctors outside Masa, they don’t bring up the past. It’s a question of clearing the air as far as they are concerned and they will not be working against the association.”
However, a number of prominent health workers believe the blanket apology is not sufficient to unlock the past, nor bring about reconciliation within the medical profession.
Dr Lesley London of the University of Cape Town said he expected Masa would have to be pushed.
“It’s going to come from outside, from health professionals who knew what it was like to work in an environment where Masa was siding with the oppressors,” he said.
“There is an extraordinary inertia to grapple with these issues. I don’t think they are frightened by the truth commission, they certainly do care, but their reasons for caring are not entirely disinterested.
“South Africa holds the presidency of the World Medical Association and there is a lot invested in the profession being seen to be clean.”
Mandell can feel the animosity felt towards Masa. “We need to build on what happened in the past and make sure that nothing of the sort happens in the future,” he said.
“There are certainly those who want to destroy Masa for what happened in the past but that apology was genuine, it was a first step, although some people claimed it was only lip-service.”
Possibly the single most divisive instance for which Masa has apologised was its abject role in regard to the doctors who did nothing to save Steve Biko from death after a severe beating by the security police.
A chief director of the Health Department, Dr Tim Wilson, resigned from Masa because of its failure to challenge the way Biko was handled.
Speaking in his personal capacity, he said there is need to probe deeper than is comfortable. “It is important to reveal what happened during those years. If we bury our mistakes, they will come back to haunt us.
“These hearings are not about retribution, or about blame, they are about acknowledging what happened.
“It’s not good enough to say we are so sorry about what happened so let us not go into this messy debate. Perhaps there should be a cut-off date, but let us get this stuff out.”
Wilson’s stance on the increasingly touchy debate is backed by Tom Winslow of the Trauma Centre for Victims of Violence and Torture in Cape Town.
With foreign funds, his organisation is to research cases of complicity within the ranks of the health profession.