No work, no votes: Unemployed health workers march to Union Buildings

Unemployed health workers are demanding employment and no budget cuts to the healthcare system, among other things.

The healthcare workers say these demands should be considered immediately and put into action. They expect a response within seven days.

About 200 healthcare workers marched to the Union Buildings in Pretoria on Monday to submit a memorandum regarding their battle to find employment within the public sector.

“Doctors are on the streets while patients are dying in queues,” and “No work, no votes!” read some of the placards at the march.

Dr Mandla Matshabe, a general practitioner, is thinking of applying for the R350 grant as he struggles to make ends meet.

“You just live to see the next day and you survive from there. That’s how I have been doing it. I am supporting the whole family. I am the only professional in my family, I am the only graduate and I need to buy food for my mother, father and four siblings,” he said.

“The whole responsibility of caring for the family lies with me — and you can imagine, now we are surviving through the R350 that the government is giving [to unemployed relatives]. I think I am also going to register for that. I don’t even know if they are going to consider me.”

Matshabe is surviving through the odd jobs he gets to assist other GPs when they need. 

Originally from Bushbuckridge in Mpumalanga, Matshabe was a beneficiary of the Cuban programme and spent seven years studying in Cuba. He came back in 2019 June to be incorporated into the South African healthcare system and completed a further 18 months in a South African university.

Matshabe has been unemployed for more than eight weeks.

“It’s very disheartening to see that there are people who have been undergoing what I have undergone for eight weeks for seven or eight years. It shows that there needs to be a change in how we lead the country, not only in health but also in education. You can’t take people to school and claim that there is a need and then you come back and say you cannot employ them.

“We went to school through the bursary schemes of the government. Government must come and give us employment so that we can serve the communities.”

It has not been easy dealing with the reality of being unemployed, he said.

“With every trauma there are steps that you undergo. You are in denial, you are thinking as a doctor there is no way I am going to be unemployed — even worse as a Cuban-trained. Then you start to think that government said they have an obligation to employ us. I have gone through all those stages and I am hopeless now. I think now more than ever I realise the reality of what I am facing.

“At first I thought it was just going to be two weeks or three weeks but it’s eight weeks now and it seems like it’s going to be 12, because the only prospect of my of employment after the budget speech is that we are probably going to be employed on the first of April. At the moment we are hopeless, we understand that we are suffering but it’s the patients too who are suffering more.”

They just need work as they are ready to serve, said Matshabe.

“The struggle is not only for us healthcare workers; it’s also about the community we are serving. It was a beautiful thing that I was picked [to study abroad]. Not a lot of people go and study abroad and to come from a poor background and get a scholarship to study internationally was a blessing.

“But unfortunately, you come back, think that you are going to be employed and you don’t get employed. You try to apply everywhere. It’s been a long journey and the government is saying they don’t owe us posts — and they don’t have money, which also does not make sense.

“It’s a roller-coaster. One moment you think you are fine. You pretend that you are fine — but when the truth sets in, when you are alone, you realise that we are living in trying times.”

Gabriella Urdang, a medical doctor, finished her community service on January 31 and has since been unemployed.

“I have been applying for posts since last year and I haven’t heard anything good or been invited to any interviews, so for now I am still unemployed and continuing to apply. I am still quite newly unemployed and I do have friends who are getting posts.

“Sometimes you do feel a bit more encouraged that there are jobs available, but when you hear stories about those who have been waiting for so long and so many years, and you hear a further announcement of them cutting overtime and no budget, it does make you feel despondent and you lose hope,” she said.

Thobani Buthelezi is a dietitian. He has been unemployed for a year.

“It’s difficult because you are surviving from your family, they help you where they can. It’s been a difficult journey after studying for so many years and not getting employment. It’s been difficult.

“We are seeing a lot of care-work professionals unemployed and it’s also about patients who are suffering in hospitals and clinics. We want to be employed,” he said.

Dr Mumtaaz Emeran has disputed claims that most doctors don’t want to work in rural areas.

“We have a lot of myths and one of them is that doctors don’t want to work in rural areas, that’s a lie. Last year I was in community service in rural Limpopo and I moved my life to go live in Limpopo, worked there for a year, and loved the rural experience — but they couldn’t retain me because there was no funding for my post and I had to move back.

“There is not one doctor here who would decline a job in the deep rural [areas]. No-one just sits at home unemployed,” she said.

I went to an interview, it was one post but they were interviewing 35 of us — so what are the chances that you will get the posts? It’s discouraging

—  Dr Lerato Jaca, unemployed doctor

What is being faced is a funding problem “but not as linear as they make it to be”, she said.

“I feel the funding for healthcare is not prioritised, so there is financial mismanagement and no-one is holding them accountable. That is why we are in this situation.

“This march is for unemployed healthcare workers — not just for doctors. Government needs to look at us as unemployed healthcare workers. They can’t just divide us. We are not going to allow that,” Emeran said.

The notion that the healthcare industry is stable has become outdated, Emeran added.

“If a young person wants to get into the health profession, they need to do it for a different reason. Stability is not one of them.”

Nkateko Gabaza, the first female deputy president of South African Medical Association Trade Union, said healthcare workers are hanging on a ledge.

“We who are on the system are burdened [with] so much work and burnt out every day, and here are hundreds of our colleagues that are here unemployed with their CVs in hand, ready to be employed now,” she said.

The unemployed doctors are ready to serve even in outlying rural areas, said Gabaza.

“They are ready to come to every corner of this country. Employ them now. Here are doctors ready to serve. Their hands are clear and they are ready to work, they are here to serve our communities. They can go overseas, but why should they when they want to serve us here in our country? They want to be employed now.”

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Lerato Jaca is hopeful she will find employment. Raised by a single unemployed mother, her older brother has epilepsy and is mentally disabled, while her other brother is a drug addict.

While doing her internship and community service, Jaca was the only one working, trying to improve her family’s life.

“Now that’s gone already. It’s really tough. You can only save so much and the savings run out, so now we depend on my brother’s disability grant and the grants of my two brothers’ children,” she said.

She was motivated to become a doctor by the fact that there was no doctor in her community. “I wanted to be the first doctor to come out of the community and it happened. I was the first female doctor to come out of my community. What motivated me was the shortage of doctors in the country.”

She finished her community service in December 2023.

“It’s very discouraging because we do not see anything the government is trying to do now. We just heard Ramaphosa only mentioning us now. I went to an interview, it was one post but they were interviewing 35 of us — so what are the chances that you will get the posts? It’s discouraging.”

Receiving the memorandum, Philemon Mahlangu from the Presidency said they would look into it and take the necessary steps.

The department of health said last week an additional budget of R3.7bn has been allocated towards the compensation of employees in the sector for the financial year 2024/25, to address the wage bill increase and recruitment of additional staff, including nurses and medical doctors.

It said it will soon outline the plans with timelines for the recruitment and appointment of health workers, including recently graduated health professionals and unemployed doctors.