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20090624

Scores of top hospitals close while South African doctors strike for third time

 

StrikingSADoctors Umbilo Road Durban June 23 2009 June 23 2009 – The major KwaZulu-Natal and Free State hospitals, which are there to treat millions of the poorest people in the country, were shut down on Tuesday as some 450 South African doctors took to the streets in a disgraceful protest over delays in implementing a promised new salary scale.

Picture left: These doctors don’t fight for a salary increase – they demand that the government make good on its previous promise to bring their salaries up to par with fair employment practices. These doctors work under the most strenuous circumstances possible: in one of the most violently criminal and AIDS-TB-infected societies in the world…

  • In KZN, the King Edward VIII, Durban Central,  Addington and Prince Mshiyeni hospitals now 'were only taking emergency cases". And all the other public hospitals in greater Durban were now only 'operating with skeleton staff'.

However, doctors in Gauteng and East Cape provinces have called off the strike ‘while awaiting the outcome of  Wednesday’s meeting," Sara president Lebogang Phahladira told Sapa.

Wednesday meeting:

The SA Medical Association, representing doctors, was meeting government officials over their earlier promise to implement of the occupation specific dispensation - a revised salary structure intended to improve the salaries of public sector workers by 50% retroactively - on Wednesday.

  • A total of 450 public sector doctors protested in Umbilo Road outside the Medical School in Durban since 9am. They vowed to 'wear red and protest in silence on Wednesday'...

'Respect for patients dying of AIDS and TB...'

"We will stand here tomorrow and there will be no singing out of respect for those patients dying and suffering from AIDS and TB," said Dr Rinesh Chetty.

  • He was addressing the doctors at the medical school on the second day of their strike by public sector doctors."Doctors will show their compassion by wearing red on Wednesday because we want government to take Aids seriously."

He told Sapa the strike was not only about wages, but also about the deteriorating conditions they had to work under in a public health sector -- which is grossly underfunded and mismanaged, while it’s also straining to administer medical care to so many tens of thousands of AIDS- and XDR-TB patients each month.

  • South Africa has more than 6-million AIDS-afflicted sufferers, and many are also co-infected with Tuberculosis, which rapidly turns into the deadliest drug-resistant strain, killing patients quickly.
  • Medical staff also have to cope with an overwhelming stream of trauma cases each day: murder, rape- , assault- and stabbing victims, as South Africa’s violent crime rates have soared out of control since 1994.

Chris Maxon of the KZN health department said: "We are also told that in areas such as Pietermaritzburg doctors use their lunch breaks to go out and picket and come back to their patients, which we view as a mature and responsible step."  Provincial health MEC Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo called on 'all retired and private doctors to come out and assist where they can...' They've again called in the (very few active on-duty doctors) in the military health service -- who often also are contracted by the military from the private sector anyway. Dhlomo himself was also stepping in to help out at 'various hospitals around Durban,' he told the news media. - Sapa
http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=594&art_id=nw20090623163756407C447638

Why are these two men hugging each other?

SA pres Zuma and Robert Zimbabwe embrace June 20 2009 SADC summit Joburg

Meanwhile, neither  South Africa’s health minister, nor its president have made any public statements about these striking doctors or showed any signs that they were at all concerned about the country’s collapsing health service – and the great suffering this is undoubtedly causing many poor South Africans.

The official stance of the South African health department is that there ‘is no crisis.’

Zuma’s alarming display of affection towards Mugabe:

On the contrary, Pres. Zuma was photographed by the South African Press Association in Johannesburg yesterday in a rather alarming display of public affection towards one of the world’s worst dictators, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

The two men were amongst the African leaders attending an emergency meeting of the SADF to discuss the growing political problem in Madagascar. It’s not clear why Mugabe was even there: the legality of his ‘relection’ has been widely contested and half of his country’s population has had to relocate to South Africa just to get fed each day.

Afrikaner educator to head Rawalpindi, Pakistan academy

 

Dr Simon Geldenhuys appointed director of ACE international Academy in Rawalpindi near Islamabad

Geldenhuys Dr Simon SA educator forced to work abroad due to BEE Jun 23 2009 -- Beeld journalist Alet Rademeyer reports that one of South Africa’s top Afrikaner educators, Dr Simon Geldenhuys of Centurion near Pretoria , realised seven years ago – after a relentless quest to find work, any work, in a whopping 514 formal job interviews -- that the country of his birth no longer wished to give him any teaching jobs: not because he wasn’t fully qualified to educate and administrate centres of learning, but because he was the wrong skin colour.

It didn't discourage him however – instead he took on new challenges overseas, as do so many of the country’s top-educated Afrikaners, including doctors, nurses, educators and administrators. It’s estimated that some 700,000 of the entire 3-million-strong Afrikaner nation now has moved abroad, contributing greatly to the South African coffers by sending their remittances home to support their families.

Dr Geldenhuys still retains his homebase in Centurion with his wife Welma. He would prefer to find a job in South Africa, but can’t.

After seven years of experience in teaching students in the Middle-East -- the United Arab Emirates, Saudi-Arabia, Jordan and Bahrein – he’s just heard the news that he was going to become the head of ACE International Academy in Islamabad’s suburb of Rawalpindi, Pakistan, which opened its doors in 2008.

More dangerous in South Africa…

  • "Isn't it dangerous?" asked the journalist. "Why yes,” he replied… ‘but where on earth isn't it dangerous”?
  • “In South Africa, people are being raped and murdered at a much higher proportion than they are in other countries where people die in terrorist attacks.'

Geldenhuys says that it has been a wonderful challenge to enter the field of education and being able to experience and study Arabian cultures. He ‘s been teaching at the Choueifat International School at Abu-Dhabi and in Dubai. Then he became director of the King Abdul Aziz International School in Riad, Saudi-Arabia. He next moved to Jordan, 'where he met the friendliest people in the entire Middle-East.'

ACE intnl academy Rawalpindi Islamabad Pakistan "I've discovered in my travels to work abroad that people are the same everywhere, whether they live in Centurion or Arabia. People have the same needs, and the same dreams for their children as we do."

He said he would of course love to find a job in South Africa again so he could be his wife Welma and the children - but doubts whether he'lll ever get the chance again.

South Africa's black-empowerment and ‘equity employment’ laws bar the vast majority of white males like him from even being allowed to apply for most jobs because they are the wrong skin-colour, even when they have the best skills on the planet. "I now am seven years older at age 55, and with a considerable portfolio containing foreign teaching experiences. But will that count?"

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sources:

Beeld story on:  ‘Werklose’ lag oor nuwe uitdagings 

Employment Equity Act discriminates against whites:

Three police stations ignore pleas for help from hijacked couple

 

Three police stations refuse help to elderly hijacked couple

20090624 - “Not our jurisdiction’, three police charge officers tell traumatised, hijacked Potgieter couple of Heatherdale, Pretoria

Potgieter_Stienie_hijacked.w husband Dries June232009 3COPSHOPSCLOSED June 23 2009. This is Mrs Stienie Potgieter, photographed by Beeld press photographer Leon Botha while reliving the horror she and her husband Dries (Nollie) had to endure while they were hijacked from their Heatherdale, Pretoria smallholding on Saturday at 6.15pm and driven around for hours through Mamelodi township – and had their ordeal made even worse when their pleas for help to chase down the criminals fell on deaf ears at three police stations – Akasia, Silverton and Boschkop.

Journalist Hilda Fourie writes that the couple were kidnapped from in front of their Heatherdale hom while Mrs Potgieter had climbed from their car to open the gate to the property. Three armed men in a delivery van drove up behind them, dragged them from their Mercedes-Benz Kompressor car, and put Mr Potgieter up against a telephone pole. A passing vehicle apparently scared the attackers, who then put the Afrikaans couple inside their delivery van. One of the men drove their Merceds-Benz for a long time but eventually disappeared. The couple were driven around for some three hours, mostly in Mamelodi, before they were thrown out outside the Sammy Marks museum. She was terrified: “When I saw the trees and the bush, I feared that they would rape and kill us,’ she said. “It was so dark. After they threw us out, I took my husband’s hand and told him we should just close our eyes and start walking as we heard them drive off.’ They found help at the home of a family nearby. “Those people phoned both the Silverton and Boschkop police stations, but nobody showed up. Both charge officers responded that ‘it was outside their area of jurisdiction,’ she said. Eventually they ended up at Acacia police station, who phoned their daughter Yonelda to come and fetch them. Meanwhile their son Andries had also reported them missing in the meantime at Acacia police station –but nobody was sent from this police station to the Potgieter home to investigate, Beeld reported. The newspaper has established that the Silverton-police station, which refused to accept the charge, lies within the jurisdiction area for the Potgieter home. Now, all three police stations are investigating the case. The hijackers have yet to be found.

Akasia-police station commander Supt. Sam Seleke said he can’t explain why a patrol wasn’t sent to the Potgieter home when the son reported them missing. “Apparently they couldn’t find the address. We’ll investigate,’ he said.  Silverton-police commander sr. supt. Charles Matji said it’s ‘the first time he’s heard of it’. He’ll investigate. The Boschkop station spokeswoman, sergeant Marinda Stoltz, said a police-student was answering the telephones on Saturday-night and ‘didn’t convey the message correctly. Even if it’s not in our jurisdiction, our people would go out and wait at the scene until the correct police station’s people show up. If our investigation shows that the student didn’t do her job property, there will be a departmental charge. The case is under investigation,’ Stoltz said. http://jv.news24.com/Beeld/Suid-Afrika/0,,3-975_2532442,00.html