TUESDAY, 4.00PM
THE Medical Association of South Africa on Wednesday admitted it had closed ranks to protect doctors implicated in human rights abuses and conceded it had been complacent in opposing apartheid policies and had practised racial discrimination by allowing black and white patients to be treated separately.
Presenting Masa’s submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s health hearings in Cape Town, Dr Edoo Barker said Masa members had been both perpetrators and victims of human rights abuses. “Masa was always part of the white establishment and it shared the political beliefs of that esablishment,” Barker, a Masa federal council member, testified. “It also shared in the misdeeds and the sins for which the white establishment was responsible. Masa was quite comfortable with the status quo. It reacted to any criticism … as the work of enemies of the state.”
The submission said the association chose professional self-interest over and above support for human rights development. “In trying to remain ‘neutral’ we recognise that Masa actually served to maintain the status quo. Masa did not adequately pursue human rights violations within the medico-politcal context.”
Masa also closed ranks to protect doctors accused of human rights violations. After the death of black consciousness leader Steve Biko in detention in 1977, Masa refused to investigate the two doctors implicated in his death. Barker described the Biko case as a “sad and disgraceful episode” in Masa’s history. He said the Masa federal council of the time believed if the Biko doctors were found guilty it would “create a furore for the government and security police and [as a result] had to be damped down as effectively as possible”.
Masa said some of its leaders may have had connections to the Broederbond — the secret society of Afrikaner decision makers — and these links may have influenced its politics.