Pretoria - Limpopo Health MEC Dr Phophi Ramathuba has added her voice to the campaign for the installation of generators in hospitals across the country.
While Ramathuba is part of the governing party engaged in a legal battle with the main opposition parties and civil society organisations to force it to exempt hospitals from load shedding, she came out this week in support of the installation of generators amid increasing levels of load shedding.
While the parties were battling it out in court, Ramathuba, an ANC Limpopo provincial executive committee member and deputy provincial chairperson of the SACP, expressed her views on Twitter.
She wrote: “Hospitals can’t go on a second without power supply. We handed over 11 generators expecting 8 more capacity between 500KVAs and 800KVAs frequency of load shedding reduced life span of our generators. 2 already moved 2 facilities in dire need some will be mobile 2 assist during breakdowns.” (sic)
In court, advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi representing political and civil society organisations, told the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, that out of 394 hospitals in South Africa, only 79 were exempt from load shedding.
Initially, the applicants wanted all health institutions, police stations and schools to be exempted, but later amended their plea to force the government to install generators and solar panels in these institutions while the country battles with load shedding.
The court, however, rejected their late amendment fearing that it would prolong the hearing, but agreed to hear the parties on the main application of exempting key institutions from load shedding.
Despite losing the first round on the amendment of their plea, Ngcukaitobi, SC, led damning evidence of medical expert Professor Rudo Mathivha of the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto.
Mathivha, in her affidavit, was adamant that load shedding was contributing to increasing mortality rates in the country, despite a denial by the Gauteng Health and Wellness Department last month.
The department, through its media spokesperson Motalatale Modiba, told the media that Gauteng had not reported deaths due to load shedding.
But Mathiva confirmed this in her sworn affidavit to the court, which stated that “there have been several instances where patients succumb and the cause of death is described in many different ways in circumstances where the cause of death may have actually been due to load shedding”.
The court also heard that persistent rolling blackouts meant that children were unable to access education; patients in public hospitals were unable to access health care; and communities were unable to get services from the SAPS.
The opposition parties argued that the state in its submissions kept demonstrating that it does not care for the working class, and that the solutions it had provided to #StopLoad shedding were not solutions at all because they would not prevent the suffering of the masses right now.
“They claim that all hospitals have generators, when they do not. Furthermore, public schools have no generators and they seemingly do not care that learners in our under-funded and under-resourced public schools are forced to go home every time the power goes out. This denies them access to education and it will have a devastating impact on them in future.”
The applicants argued that the state had demonstrated a general apathy and a total lack of urgency when it comes to resolving this crisis.
“President Ramaphosa in his papers washes his hands of the crisis by claiming that he is not responsible, and he shifts the blame to municipalities. We have called on the court to allocate responsibility where it rests because the state has a duty to act, especially in the face of loss of life,” Ngcukaitobi said.
“You don’t shrug your shoulders when rights violations are not denied, and legal responsibility is clear. You grapple with the problem and put interim solutions (in place), but there is no scope for doing nothing.”
Judgment is set to be delivered next month.
Pretoria News