JUSTICE MALALA | Deprive the people of hospital beds, then the truth ― spoken like a true ANC official

In the Sunday Times yesterday (February 8), Gauteng health MEC Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko was asked about overcrowding at hospitals. This issue has been highlighted numerous times in various publications and media platforms over many years. It’s not a made-up story. It’s a fact that many of us know from bitter experience because we have seen friends and relatives wait for a day or more for a bed at Gauteng hospitals.

Her response to the question was thoughtless, cynical, heartless and heartbreaking: “Did you know that when you are sick, you want to [lie] down? [Especially] when you are pregnant and want to deliver and are in pain, [you] go down and sleep on the floor. The patients will say, ‘Leave me — I want to sleep on the floor.’ To you, it’s [just] people who are sleeping on the floor, because you come and steal that with your camera.”

She has now apparently barred journalists from taking pictures in Gauteng hospitals. This is also the person who this week hailed the return of the suspended former head of her department to work despite his having been flagged by the Special Investigating Unit as a high-risk individual who has received R1.6m in questionable ATM cash deposits suspected to be linked to the looting of Tembisa Hospital.

It is tempting to demand that the premier of Gauteng, Panyaza Lesufi, fire Nkomo-Ralehoko immediately. It is even more tempting to demand that she be censured in the strongest terms by the African National Congress for her utterly outrageous claim that patients sleep on cold, hard floors in Gauteng hospitals because “they want to”.

Yet calling for her head would be useless and would not elicit any action from her boss or her party. That is because precious few in the ANC today see any problem here. The acts of corruption (think Tembisa Hospital, where more than R2bn has been looted by ANC-affiliated cadres) and incompetence in Nkomo-Ralehoko’s department are not an aberration, they are the norm. Individuals like her, people who blame the victim and the media instead of addressing the problems that South Africa’s people face, are the party leaders now.

What is at stake in South Africa is not just about the money that’s being stolen and lost through corruption and incompetence. What’s at stake is that greed, cynicism and cruelty now rule above all else.

Nkomo-Ralehoko wants us to disbelieve what we can see with our own eyes.

Nelson Mandela once said: “A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.”

We now have a country where the lowest (the poorest) are asked to believe a lie that all is fine at Gauteng hospitals when many can tell you from experience that people have and still do sleep on the floor and that in many, rats and cockroaches run rampant. Nkomo-Ralehoko wants us to disbelieve what we can see with our own eyes. If she is so sure there are no people sleeping on floors, then why is she barring the media? What will they find if it’s not there?

We all know now that the ANC will lose the local elections in 2026 and will very likely suffer catastrophic losses in the national elections in 2029. Many of us analysing these outcomes will point towards the party’s failure to deliver in every sphere of government.

I don’t, however, think that it will be “things” like broken infrastructure, joblessness and the many other failures, that will make people turn away from the ANC. Voters will walk away from the ANC because it has lost its heart, it has forgotten that the first words of the constitution are “we, the people”, and that it should govern for the masses rather than spit in their faces as someone like Nkomo-Ralehoko does.

Embedded in her utterances is the mindset of a party that has not just lost the ability to do things, but has also now lost the ability to tell the difference between gangster and leader, between right and wrong. For those who were inspired by the ANC’s commitment to ethical leadership in the past, it must be shattering to hear the jarring and deadly words of a Nkomo-Ralehoko.

Again, Nkomo-Ralehoko is not an anomaly. She is not a freak in the ANC. She is a leader who is respected and is gunning for the top leadership position in the province. She is the norm.

Many ANC voters have watched with pain and consternation as their party has betrayed them, undermined them and treated them with disdain over years. As we have seen with the huge number of voters who have chosen to stay home (rather than vote for other parties) in recent elections, many really did not wish to walk away from the ANC.

Now they will actively vote for someone else. They will be walking away from a party that has not only failed to deliver infrastructure and services, but has also lost its soul and its Ubuntu (humanity).