by LUKE ZUNGA
JOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – OPERATION Dudula fielded their formidable banner displaying a clenched fist and a cross of AK47 rifles, in a march in Durban against foreigners using South African hospital facilities.
Indeed, South African hospitals are for South Africans, not foreigners. Foreigners were causing queues, and South Africans were squeezed and delayed at their hospitals.
South Africans have to wake up early to be in the hospital queues to compete with foreigners.
Backed by March and March, another upcoming protest organisation, they marched to the offices of the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) and Social and Economic Rights Institute (SERI) in Durban, to protest about the human rights body’s defence of constitutional rights of patients approaching hospitals.
In terms of the Florence Nightingale doctrine hospitals are supposed to treat all patients without looking into who they are.
Florence Nightingale was born on 12 May 1820 in Italy of wealthy British parents.
She was the mother of modern nursing. She pioneered nursing from the work of low-class citizens, serving the wealthy, to a well-organized hospital system, with sacrificial staff treating the sick and poor, even at night with lamps.
Her parents were perturbed by her work on the frontline, where she treated the roars of injured and dying soldiers when Britain fought the Russians in the Crimean Peninsula.
She modernised nursing and made it a sacrificial profession to serve sick people and was awarded Lady of the Order of St John of Jerusalem in 1904 and Order of Merit in 1907.
Times have changed. Of course, Operation Dudula would not be a candidate for these honours.
Dubula’s arguments, and those who support them, such as Action SA and Patriotic Alliance (PA), are correct in a narrow sense but frail and depleted, because they do not track the source of the problem.
Most of the foreigners referred are Zimbabweans whose hospitals were destroyed by a party supported to the hilt by the government and the African National Congress (ANC) politicians in South Africa.
Operation Dudula must ask why South Africa is the first to congratulate and celebrate fraudulent elections in Zimbabwe, where every tool of government is politicized and people dread fear.
In 2002 the head of South Africa election, Sam Motsuenyane, declared. “Based on our observations, the outcome of the 2002 Zimbabwe presidential election should be considered legitimate.”
South Africa’s powerful voice is standing in the way for any political moderation in Zimbabwe from 1995, 2000, 2002, 2008 onwards.
The bloody 29 March 2008 election results took four weeks to be released on 2nd May 2008.
The results were unconvincing, followed by heavy violence which forced Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai to withdraw from the manipulated re-run.
You may google Zimbabwe election reports. Under pressure for her spurious support South Africa appointed a Judicial Commission of Judges Sisi Khampepe and Dikgang Moseneke who produced a report which South Africa refused to release despite court judgements to force its release.
It exposed the violence and fraud in the Zimbabwe elections. The ANC and the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) have an election pact.
The ANC invited Zanu PF to help in the ANC campaign in the South African general elections of 29 May 2024.
Most of the Zimbabweans in South Africa are Ndebeles, and they don’t apologize for being here.
They are products of Nongoma, through Shaka, Soshangana and Mzilikazi. Some may not have South Africa identity documents (IDs), but came under the disguise of visitors and after treatment go back.
Therefore, they are not all illegal foreigners, as is currently framed. But there is politics to be sorted out.
So, the hospitals must treat patients, while sorting out the politics in Luthuli House and Karigamombe, the headquarters of Zanu PF in Harare.
The unholy alliance is exposed in an abstract ‘ANC-ZanuPF Alliance doing more harm than good’(ZimIndependent, 23 August 2024).
Dudula’s struggle is misplaced. As researchers, Dudula is invited. The struggle must be to grow the economy, and feed every house, not fighting over imported pills.
If people are sick somewhere the disease will end up where you are. That is why the United States (US) gives funding to fight diseases abroad, because the disease will end up in the US and other countries, if uncontrolled.
Also – South Africa is gaining, from the demise of the region, on exports to these countries.
The region is not entirely a cost to South Africa.
Dudula, please change the tenuity of your struggle. Zimbabweans, South Africans and other Africans must work together to solve the key issues which are at the heart of regional play.
We must raise capital and not wait for foreign investors or tenders. South Africa can raise US$384 billion on its own in 20 years (Zimbabwe – US$102 billion) to start factories, technological development, commercial agriculture and linked infrastructure.
ALL BRICS+ Self Capitalization
Operations Dudula are not paying attention, that we must force governments to facilitate raising capital and not wait for Americans.
That should be the message for all Africans and BRICS plus countries.
The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) and Social and Economic Rights Institute (SERI) are saying the struggle should not be in hospitals or against the vulnerable victims of politics.
Our struggle must be to access, participate in equitable developmental growth, opportunities, and not this political unpredictable Kekec.
BRICS+ is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, including new additional members comprising Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
– CAJ News