Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
South African Press Association - June 21, 2007
Last week the TAC and seven Khayelitsha residents lodged an urgent application to reverse the dismissal of 41 striking Western Cape health workers.
On Thursday the applicants' advocate, Peter Hodes, told the court the dismissals infringed on the constitutional rights of patients to health services and to life and dignity.
Hodes referred Judge Siraj Desai to the affidavits of Dr Srinisivasan Govender and Dr Eric Goemaere, both working at clinics in Khayelitsha.
According to Govender, the summary dismissals meant that even if the strike ended the Khayelitsha clinics would not be able to provide sustainable emergency services, or care for chronic, mental and acute illnesses or serve children and pregnant women.
Goemaere, head of Medicines Sans Frontieres in South Africa, said HIV-positive patients whose treatment was interrupted could become ill and die.
Hodes told a packed courtroom - including TAC chairman Zackie Achmat and TAC supporters - that not one of the dismissed workers had committed any of the offences the provincial health department had set out as grounds for dismissal.
These, he said, included intimidating colleagues who wanted to work or patients trying to enter a health facility, threatening or attacking non-striking workers or visiting working colleagues at their homes and threatening them.
Hodes said the respondents -- Western Cape health MEC Pierre Uys, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and Public Service Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi - "have non-suited themselves by failing to file any affidavits at all".
When Hodes referred to an affidavit filed by a nurse at a clinic in Khayelitsha, Desai stopped him to ask if it was a mistake that the nurse - employed at the clinic since 1990 - was only earning R2,500.
"That's what the strike's about," Hodes said.
He emphasised that the province using the public service strike a "pretext" for the dismissals, and that the TAC's application did not concern the legality of the strike itself.
The case continues this afternoon.
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