Zimbabwean government spokesperson Ndavaningi “Nick” Mangwana has accused South Africa’s Health Minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, of xenophobia.
This accusation follows Motsoaledi’s comments alleging that Zimbabwe is sending its citizens across the border to access free medical treatment.
As a former Home Affairs Minister, Motsoaledi has long been critical of the influx of Zimbabwean immigrants into South Africa.
He claimed that South African hospitals are becoming overwhelmed by non-paying foreign patients.
In remarks made to South African media during the ANC NEC Lekgotla in Benoni earlier this month, Motsoaledi used an analogy comparing leaders to a father who instructs his children to eat next door instead of engaging the neighbour to help resolve the family’s challenges. He said:
They just close their eyes and let people cross the border (into South Africa). It’s unfair.
Motsoaledi claimed that a Zimbabwean doctor once sent a cancer patient to South Africa with a request that she must be given a pint of blood. He said:
And I want to say this publicly even though [it’s] sensitive. When Phophi Ramathuba was being attacked by all and sundry, during that period when she was being attacked, she received a letter from a patient sent to South Africa by a GP in Zimbabwe. “The lady has got cancer, stage 4 already… please give that lady a pint of blood.”
In other words, one country asking another country… I will tell you why that is abhorrent to me. Blood is not manufactured.
We get it from the population. There are human beings in Zimbabwe and they have blood, lots of it, for that matter.
All they need to do if they don’t have the technology of taking that blood is to come to South Africa [and say], “Can you help us with people who are going to get people to donate blood in our country” instead of closing their eyes and throw their people over the border. It’s unfair.
In an apparent response to Motsoaledi’s stinging remarks, Mangwana, in a social media post, described Motsoaledi’s statements as uninformed and xenophobic.
In a post on X accompanied by a video of National Blood Services CEO Lucy Marowa saying the country has enough blood stocks, Mangwana said:
The National Blood Services CEO Ms Lucy Marowa speaks on the issue of blood stocks. She says Zimbabwe has enough blood stocks for its needs.
This was said in light of some misinformed and xenophobic statements by some Minister from a foreign country.
The war of words between Harare and Pretoria over Zimbabwean patients allegedly overwhelming South Africa’s healthcare system started in 2022.
In August 2022, then Limpopo Member of the Executive Council (MEC of Health) Phophi Ramathuba, set the cat among the pigeons when she berated a Zimbabwean female patient seeking surgery at Bela-Bela, a public hospital in South Africa’s Limpopo Province.
She was filmed telling the Zimbabwean woman that foreigners were overburdening South Africa’s health sector.
The remarks attracted varying responses from people of all walks of life with fellow medical practitioners saying Ramathuba had violated the profession’s ethics.
The Zimbabwean Embassy in Pretoria expressed “shock and disbelief” over the video and conveyed its concerns through the Department of International Relations and Cooperation.
South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa said that Ramathuba could have raised the issue of immigrants using South Africa’s healthcare services “in another way”.
While answering parliamentary questions, Ramaphosa said Ramathuba had “raised an important issue” of how “service delivery is affected by migration”.
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