What is Gloria Ndoro saying here? That the MEC of Health can be the gatekeeper of undocumented patients or that the promise of dignity in s1 of the SA Constitution has no nexus with human documentation?

“Hold your horses all of you, please. Refrain from coming out guns blazing for her. Guns must blaze for your country and those running and ruining it.

Let us look at the logic, not the drama and the people laughing in the background. Humiliating and demeaning as it might be, we must persuade ourselves to face the truth and understand her logic. Yes as a medical doctor, she committed to the hippocratic oath, but in her mind, it is only for South Africans. It has to be. Resources are scarce. We must not judge her. South Africans must judge her, not us. If you are Zimbabwean and you are judging her, you have become entitled to things that do not belong to you.

Here is the simple logic:

You’re a Mother of a household (MEC for Health). Things are tight for everyone (In SA and Zimbabwe). You get a grocery budget from your husband (Treasury via Ministry of Health) to buy food (medicines, salaries, etcetera) for your family (South Africans). Now the children from next door (Zimbabwe) are eating at your house full time (crossing the border to seek medical help in SA). So when the food is short in the household (SA hospitals are short of medicines for South Africans), how does Mother (MEC) explain to her children (South Africans) that they are going to bed hungry (no medications and equipment for operations) because she fed the neighbours’ children (Zimbabweans)?

She is telling the truth. The drama was uncalled for. This kind of drama is happening in SA hospitals daily. The MEC was just recorded. What about those incidents not recorded? Let us not get emotional. Treasury resources of any given country are finite. That is what she is saying in her drama-filled narrative. You can never bend the truth guys. It is what it is.

When I travelled to the UK in 2018, I had a flare up of Pulmonary Sarcoidosis 🫁 . An ambulance picked me up from my Aunt’s house to a hospital. They said I was a foreigner and were not keen on the travel insurance to cover the treatment. They told me Nigerians were in the habit of flying in for treatment. I told them I was not Nigerian. I also told them that I entered the country healthy and not to seek medical help. They made me pay £40. After the treatment and an “assessment” of whether I was telling the truth or not, they gave me back my £40.

So this issue of finite treasury resources is not unique to SA. Seek medical help in SA, but pay if you are visiting and do not have medical aid. Do not crowd out South Africans in their medical institutions. We must swallow this bitter pill 💊 , because nothing else is more truthful than this fact.”