We bar foreigners to protect health facility — residents

Zandspruit residents who are behind blocking foreigners from accessing the local clinic say they are doing so because of overcrowding. 

Members of the so-called Combat Movement said their illegal campaign to bar foreign nationals from the clinic was not xenophobia, but to protect the health facility.

For the past few days members of the movement have been manning the clinic’s gate where they separate South African patients from others they believed are foreigners. They demand to see their travel documents and then force nurses to issue them transfer letters. The letters, which Sowetan has seen, state that the patient is a  foreigner and should receive treatment elsewhere. Sowetan witnessed similar scenes at Cosmo City Clinic. 

Yesterday, Johannesburg MMC for public safety David Tembe visited the Zandspruit clinic after learning of the incidents in a Sowetan article published on Wednesday.

Enos Maake, leader of the movement, told Sowetan that their actions came about after they realised there were long queues at the clinic.

“People have to go to the clinic at 3am, which is not safe. There is also a shortage of medication because of the big influx of patients, and sometime it reaches a point where they [health workers]  don’t even have bandages,” he said.

Without providing any proof, Maake added that they had also discovered that the majority of patients were foreign nationals.

“We asked nurses why South Africans cannot get services here... management at the clinic told us they have so many foreigners with passports, asylum seeker documents and residential permits who come to the clinic, even leaving their documents here [at the clinic]. We realised there was a problem,” Maake said.

Maake denied chasing away anyone who has a legal document allowing them to be in SA, despite Sowetan witnessing such incidents the previous day.

“We are not stopping documented foreign nationals but only those without any form of identification. We are saying those who get medication here but don’t have documentation, to get themselves documented,” Maake said.

He suggested that the government must provide a mobile clinic to undocumented migrants.

Nurses told Tembe that the clinic was overcrowded and the resources did not match the number of patients they have. 

“You find a patient comes today, with passport or asylum seeker and you give them medication for three months. A week later, they come again and say their shack got burned down, you give them medication again. A week later they are back saying they got mugged and lost the medication. In just one month, you may find you have given chronic medication to the same patient four times,” the nurse said.

The clinic services between 180 to 200 patients a day and the facility has leaking roofs, dysfunctional generators and photocopiers that do not work. Workers explained that they had to have documents printed at a shack across the road because their printer has not been working for months.

Tembe said: “Before I came here I informed the MMC of health of my visit. I will report to him what I have seen and with his staff they will tell us as community safety how they want us to help them. I cannot come and prescribe what should happen at this clinic. It is health that knows best what should happen here.”

Maake and his group later came back to the clinic once Tembe and other officials had left.

The situation remained the same at the Cosmo City clinic yesterday, with foreigners being turned away from the healthcare facility.

dlaminip@sowetan.co.za