WAR OF WORDS: South Africa complains about ‘sick’ Zimbabweans clogging its hospitals

By Kitsepile Nyathi for The East African

HARARE: A war of words has erupted between South African and Zimbabwean government officials after Pretoria complained that its neighbours are overwhelming its health care system.

South Africa’s Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi set the cat among the pigeons earlier this month when he singled out Zimbabwe for allegedly sending its citizens across the border for free medical treatment.

Dr Motsoaledi, an outspoken critic of the influx of Zimbabwean immigrants into the southern Africa’s strongest economy, said South African hospitals were being overwhelmed by non-paying foreign patients.

“They just close their eyes and let people cross the border (into South Africa). It’s unfair,” he said.

The minister claimed that a Zimbabwean doctor once sent a cancer patient to South Africa with a request that she must be given a pint of blood.

“And I want to say this even though it’s sensitive,” he added.

“In other words, one country is asking another (to provide blood for its citizens.) I will tell you why that is abhorrent to me.

“Blood is not manufactured. We get it from the population. There are human beings in Zimbabwe and they have blood, lots of it, for that matter.”

Medical refugees

In an apparent response to Dr Motsoaledi’s stinging remarks, government mouthpieces in Zimbabwe on social media have been sharing interviews with officials saying the country has enough blood stocks.

Nick Mangwana, the government spokesperson, in one of the social media posts described Dr Motsoaledi’s statements as uninformed and xenophobic.

“The National Blood Services CEO Ms Lucy Marowa speaks on the issue of blood stocks,” said Mr Mangwana on a post on X accompanied by a video.

“She says Zimbabwe has enough blood stocks for its needs.

“This was said in light of some misinformed and xenophobic statements by some minister from a foreign country.”

He followed the posts with several short videos of various senior health officials confirming that hospitals in their areas had enough blood supplies.

Thousands of Zimbabweans cross the border into South Africa every day, many risking their lives crossing a crocodile-infested river to flee decades of economic meltdown.

Read: Ramaphosa: Zimbabwean migrants a burden to SA

Some cross the border to seek medical care because Zimbabwe’s public health system has been crippled by a severe brain drain and perennial underfunding.

Once in South Africa, Zimbabweans do not struggle to access health care because the country’s Constitution guarantees access to basic services to all those living within its borders, including refugees, asylum seekers and migrants.

South African government officials often complain that pregnant Zimbabwean public officials are in the habit of crossing the border to give birth, crowding out locals.

In 2022, a viral video showed a South African provincial government official in Limpopo Province chastising a woman who had been involved in an accident in Zimbabwe but crossed the border for treatment.

Dr Phophi Ramathuba, who was the health minister in the province that borders Zimbabwe, told the patient, who was lying on a hospital bed awaiting surgery, that President Emmerson Mnangagwa did not contribute to South Africa’s budget and that her country’s health system was not a “charity.”

Suspected undocumented Zimbabweans are arrested in South Africa after illegally crossing the border near the Beitbridge border post on October 2, 2020. File | AFP

Red list

Daniel Molokele, chairperson of Zimbabwe’s parliamentary portfolio committee on health, said the South African minister’s remarks were driven by frustration.

“He is frustrated because the South African health system is under pressure from mostly Zimbabwean patients,”  Molokele said.

“It is difficult for them to predict and plan where people that are not catered for in their budgets continue to flood their hospitals.

“The Zimbabwean government must fix its health delivery system. We are not funding our health delivery system. We have shortages of health skills and essential medicines,” he said.

According to official statistics, 4,000 health workers, including more than 2,600 nurses left Zimbabwe in 2021 and 2022.  Most of them moved to Canada, Australia and Britain.

Last year, the World Health Organisation added Zimbabwe on a “red list” of countries with pressing health worker shortages.

Itai Rusike, executive director of the Community Working Group on Health, which lobbies for improved access to health services, said Dr Motsoaledi’s comments were a wake-up call for the Zimbabwean authorities.

“Leaders must take into account the dire need to improve health services provision for the benefit of ordinary citizens instead of stretching the resources allocated to service the citizens and permanent residents of South Africa,” Mr Rusike said.

“Unfortunately, some political leaders have even died outside the country in foreign hospitals while seeking treatment because their own health care services have collapsed due to poor funding and mismanagement.”