Dr Trudy Thomas has lambasted the ANC-led government for being in the forefront of creating ‘Worse Services for All’
Pule waga Mabe
The former MEC of health in the Eastern Cape, who resigned from the provincial legislature last week, has blamed the ruling party’s monetary policies for the collapse of health and social services in the province.
Dr Trudy Thomas, who has been a member of the African National Congress for a decade and a health professional for 35 years, resigned from the party and the government on the grounds that both have failed to live up to the 1994 election promise of “A Better Life for All”.
Thomas, who will not be joining another political party, said she was frustrated as an MEC for health because it was hard for her to operate and to reach out to the poorest of the poor.
“There is a steady, visible and measurable deterioration in social services, development and the economy due, in my view, to the finance and budgeting policies and practices of the Eastern Cape government since 1997. [It is that] that led me to resign first from the legislature and now from the ANC,” she said.
Thomas said there has been no improvement of services in the province. “It is mindless, rudderless, decaying and a ridiculous scenario.”
She claims the situation post-1994 in hospitals in the Eastern Cape has gone from bad to worse. Rural hospitals and clinics are trying to deal with outbreaks of serious diseases while understaffed, under-resourced and with no laboratory equipment. The institutions also lack adequate medicine and food supplies.
“The cash flow crisis in 1997 was indeed real all, however, generated by national policies and actions.” She said a severe shortfall due to under-funding by the national treasury of about R600-million for the obligatory statutory payment of pensioners was predictable.
Thomas said the Eastern Cape has the worst socio-economic and development indicators: it has the worst levels of poverty, infant mortality, life expectancy, illiteracy, infrastructure, services and skills and the highest level of sickness, disability and social ills in the country.
She lambasted the ANC-led government for being in the forefront of creating “Worse Services for All”.
Thomas has blamed the government’s growth, employment and redistribution macroeconomic policy for creating an unhealthy environment in the province, and for not allowing MECs to operate efficiently.
She said the Eastern Cape government lacks the capacity to manage and administer resources and that in the past two years hospitals have run out of food for patients and staff have taken money out of their own pockets or appealed to churches for donations.
She said that before her resignation she wrote letters to Eastern Cape Premier Makhenkesi Stofile complaining about the consequences of the inadequate budgets and financial strategies. She pleaded for pay for community doctors who two months into their appointments could not afford transport to work. She also pleaded for overtime pay for ambulance staff who, after a “long-suffering” year, had finally withdrawn their unpaid night services.
In her letter to Stofile, she made urgent requests for the treasury to process subsidy cheques to hospitals whose staff were holding administrators hostage until they received their salaries. She gave him urgent notification that drugs and food had run out, told him health services were dysfunctional and called for his intervention.
Despite her complaints, she said she received no response from the premier’s offices. Instead, there were further cuts to the provincial budgets.
“Perhaps the real problem lay in my naive belief that we were all actually working for that better life for all, whereas the real agenda of the present political bosses like politicians everywhere was the advancement of their individual political careers,” Thomas said bitterly.
“The poverty all round was merely handy vote and speech fodder. However, I wrestled with these subversive thoughts. How I hated it each time they were confirmed as true.”
Thomas said she finally decided to quit when she learned that rural clinics that used to operate for 24 hours in the Seventies now opened for only four hours, and the supply of drugs they had to administer was erratic.
“I am quite aware that, being white and a former MEC, I am a sitting duck for accusations of racism, anti-transformationism and sour grapes.” She said the ANC has created a situation where poor people become poorer due to its political and administrative decisions.
In 1996 Thomas received, through a process of peer selection, the Nelson Mandela award for Health and Human Rights.
The ANC in the Eastern Cape has received the resignation of Thomas with mixed feelings.
“As you recruit people into the party you expect them to resign,” said Phakamisa Hobongwana, the party’s representative in the province. However, he said, they were “shocked” to hear about Thomas’s resignation.
He said he doesn’t understand her problems and that her logic is very naive. “You spend money for things that are budgeted for. There are no reasons for her to resign. We are developing the Transkei.”