This damn strike

“Burning tyres, barricaded gates and doctors crawling underneath barbed wire fences - that's how day three of the public sector strike unfolded at the Helen Joseph hospital on Friday morning.”

“The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union said patients facing life and death situations must “negotiate” with strikers about crossing hospital picket lines.”

“Three pupils from Bernadino Heights High School in Kraaifontein, north of Cape Town, needed urgent medical attention after a mob of about 300 striking teachers descended on their classes.”

“A 21-year-old man, who needed emergency surgery after his hand had been chopped off, was turned away by two state hospitals due to a public service strike, says paramedics.”

“A ward assistant said that there was no kitchen staff on duty so patients could not be given porridge in the morning."There was no one to make porridge this morning so we could only give the patients bread and tea for breakfast."”

“As 53 critically ill babies were left to starve by striking nurses, and as more than 10 adults died at an abandoned Gauteng hospital, private clinics and military medics yesterday came to the rescue of the country's crippled health system.”

This public strike is making me absolutely furious!

Yes, it is your right to strike but as President Zuma noted yesterday, you have absolutely no right to do it violently – putting others in danger.

One amazing brightspark said on the news last night that “they must find the money, even if they have to borrow from Zimbabwe”. Seriously?! If the government gives in to the demands, there will be serious repercussions in this country, and if they don’t, the consequences are scary.

Do they not realise that to pay these salaries, they are going to have to take funds from the actual public sector.

And just wait, the next strike will be about lack of equipment.

And those ‘others’ are the most vulnerable in our society – patients in hospitals (if they weren’t turned away), who can’t even get porridge in the morning, let alone medical care.

School children – the future of this country – who are literally being denied their education because their schools are closed. I fear this year’s matric results will be worse than any other year as they have already been disadvantaged by the long holiday during the World Cup and now they must do preparation on their own as their teachers toi-toi and picket.

That being said, there are brave doctors, nurses and teachers who continue to do their job despite intimidation and threats from their colleagues. My friend, Kate, a nurse at Steve Biko Hospital in Pretoria is going to work in plain clothes, and is relieved to be working night duty because at least she is missing the most of the strikers. She is paid just as badly and yet she is still going to work? What makes her different from her toi-toing colleague? They studied the same, do the same job and are both equally dependent on their paycheck to survive (no hand outs from a rich daddy for Kate). And yet she would probably climb under barbed wire to get to her patients that need her. 

The difference is this: passion and dedication. From her passion, she is dedicated to do her job no matter what.

I hope that I too will have the same passion for truth to keep doing my job as a journalist no matter what. And I fear that day is sooner than we think with the Protection of Information Act and talk about a Media Tribunal.