LEONARD NDZHUKULA, Nelspruit | Monday 10.00am.
SIX Mpumalanga medical students have returned from studying in Cuba where, thay claim, they were held in a “concentration camp from hell” where they were discriminated against in a manner similar to aprtheid.
According to the students, Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma lied to them about their contracts and publicly intimidated them when she visited Cuba in June this year. When the students complained about bad food, Zuma allegedly told them that she used to eat worse food than them while she was in exile.
The students claim they all signed 18-month contracts with the government, but Zuma allegedly told them when she visited Cuba that they will stay for three years. They claim they were not allowed legal advice before signing the contracts, which were signed a few hours before their departure for Cuba.
One student, Sunnyboy Jele (25) of KaNyamazane, alleged that South African students were forced to sleep like prisoners and eat like pigs. “Four or more students were forced to share one small room, we used to sleep like prisoners of war in a concentration camp of hell. We used to eat very bad food like we were pigs,” he said.
Jele claims that Zuma failed to solve their problems when she visited Cuba, and instead tried to intimidate them. “When we asked questions, the minister called us troublemakers and boasted of all the years and bad things that happened to her while in exile. She forgets that we went to Cuba to study, not for military training,” he said.
Another student, who asked not to be named, told how she and a colleague were dragged out of their hostel rooms and sent to an isolation zone in Havana after they both tested HIV positive. After that, all the South African students were required to have HIV tests, and, when they refused, rumours appeared that all the South African students had Aids.
Among the students’ other complaints were that they were treated more harshly than white students, and that they were fed “rotten food” and horse flesh.
Zuma’s spokesperson Khangelani Hlongwane confirmed that two of the students have some “health problems, which cannot be discussed in public.” He refused to comment on allegations made by the students against the minister by insisting that they never complained about such issues before. South African representative for the Cuban minister of health, Dr Jim Davis, said the students fabricated lies against Cuba since they failed to make it in their studies. “There is no difference between blacks and whites in Cuba. The students only have a problem with discipline,” he said — African Eye News Service