Despite being publicly lambasted by President Thabo Mbeki, a professor at Groote Schuur hospital is standing by his claims that racial quotas have had a damaging effect on specialist staffing at Western Cape hospitals.
And another doctor, who says he is emigrating to Australia because he has hit a career ceiling, has also come forward to point out the omissions in Mbeki’s facts.
The head of surgery at Groote Schuur, Professor Del Kahn, initially told the Sunday Times that two specialist posts at his hospital had stood vacant for more than two years because no black candidates could be found.
In the debate on his budget speech this week, Mbeki lashed out at the report as ”entirely false”, saying the two posts referred to in the article had since been filled with two white candidates.
Interviewed this week, Kahn said the two candidates in question had been appointed only after a two-year delay.
Kahn said he and his colleagues agreed with transformation through affirmative action. However, in the absence of black applicants for key posts, it was damaging if other qualified applicants are not appointed simply because of the colour of their skin.
Apart from the problems this caused for patients, Kahn said, this also affected the morale of hospital personnel.
He said: ”We all know the policies behind transformation and we do support them. But both the candidates at Groote Schuur were very upset, as they had applied for two top posts but were then given the impression that the province doesn’t want them because they’re white.
”Both are of extreme value to the hospital, but threatened to leave after this happened. We had to convince them to stay.”
Kahn said a more blatant form of racial discrimination in the Western Cape’s health sector applied to registrars. ”Excellent applicants are not appointed simply because they are Indian. In terms of equity targets and official policy, which looks at the broader demographics of the province, black females are highest priority, while male Indians are officially the lowest priority.
”We recently had an applicant for a registrar who was outstanding and the interview panel was highly impressed with him, but he couldn’t be appointed simply because he’s an Indian male.”
Mbeki also focused on other claims in the Sunday Times article by specialist anaesthetist Fred Mattheyse. Mattheyse, who is now bound for Australia, told the newspaper: ”I’m leaving reluctantly, but I have reached a ceiling in my career here.”
In Parliament, Mbeki said Mattheyse had withdrawn his application and that it was ”entirely false and dishonest of the Sunday Times to suggest that this [his departure to Australia] was a result of the implementation of government policies”.
But Mattheyse has told the Mail & Guardian that the facts of the case ”clearly indicate some other agenda” on Mbeki’s part, and that there are important omissions in his response.
The post for a senior specialist anaesthetist at Tygerberg was first advertised in October 2005. Mattheyse applied and was interviewed in April last year.
According to a colleague who did not want to be named, he was highly recommended by the hospital to the provincial board. ”He is an incredibly well-qualified anaesthetist who also holds a PhD in physiology,” the colleague said.
However, four months later he received a letter saying that the post would be re-advertised.
”Mbeki’s speech made no mention of this first interview that I attended, or the recommendation that the hospital made,” he said.
When the position was re-advertised, Mattheyse said he had reapplied in October last year. He was told he would be interviewed only in April the following year – 18 months after his original application. In the interim he had been offered a four-year post in Australia and thus withdrew his application.
While Mattheyse was reluctant to comment directly on the issue of racial nationalism, he said another type of agenda was clearly at play, and to him the most serious result of this was that the department had been without a senior specialist anaesthetist for so long.
Gareth Morgan, DA spokesperson for health, has said that the president had relied on technicalities to explain away the situation.
”He chose to focus on the details,” he said, ”and in doing so spoke about the adverts for positions, waiting periods and other such things. But the basic fact is that an anaesthetist is a critical specialist for any surgery. They had a highly qualified candidate who was accepted by the interview panel but was then rejected by the department, even though the operating lists had to be cut down due to lack of an anaesthetist.”