Police clean up rubble at the entrance to the Bheki Mlangeni District Hospital.
(Photo: Bheki Simelane) 
On Thursday, 27 June, hopeful interns at the Bheki Mlangeni District Hospital in Jabulani, Soweto, started burning tyres at the hospital gates to demand permanent jobs they say were promised to them.
The aggrieved workers, wearing visible tags denoting their status as interns, told Daily Maverick that when Ward 46 councillor Dumisani Modladlaba had taken them to the hospital last year, he had promised that they would eventually be employed permanently.
However, Modladlaba said the group of about a dozen workers did not have any business being at the hospital and that he had made it clear to them in May last year that they should stop going to the hospital.
“I wrote a letter as a councillor preventing them from going to the hospital. But they continued volunteering their services, and they are saying they are working,” Modladlaba said.
He said that when the group joined the hospital around April last year, he and hospital management had agreed that they were volunteers. Modladlaba said the group was aware of this and that they would not get paid for their services.
There is no doubt that the hospital has recognised the group because their official name tags state that they are attached to the hospital as interns.
Noluvo Dwenene (36), one of the interns, said they had been working for many months without getting paid.
For the better part of Thursday morning, organised labour, hospital management and Modladlaba were locked in a meeting to discuss the issues raised by the group.
“The representative from the department met with the group … who [it] seems had an arrangement with the ward councillor who had introduced them to the hospital,” Gauteng health department spokesperson Motalatale Modiba said. “They had some grievances in relation to the arrangement they had with the councillor, including allegations regarding apparently unfulfilled sort of commitments or promises…”
On emerging from the meeting with hospital management, Gauteng health department representative Julius Maputla told the small crowd at the hospital gates: “The department doesn’t know you. Only the hospital knows you. You were brought here on the promise that you would get work. But no one owns up to you now.”
The workers responded with anger, accusing Modladlaba of corruption.
Maputla downplayed the allegations against the councillor and said his task was to understand the status of the group at the hospital.
Speaking to Daily Maverick outside the hospital gates while the meeting was going on, the interns said the councillor, together with his friends in the South African Police Service and elsewhere, had constantly tried to push them out of the hospital
They told Daily Maverick that corruption was at the centre of the move to oust them from the hospital.
“He has hired eight guards of his who now work at the security gates,” one of the interns said.
Protection order
Police clean up rubble at the entrance to the Bheki Mlangeni District Hospital. (Photo: Bheki Simelane)
Speaking to Daily Maverick on Thursday evening, Modladlaba denied the allegations. He said all community members were given a chance to apply by himself.
“The unions advised them to open a case against me, and when it did not succeed they sought a protection order against me. This would prevent me from stopping them going to the hospital,” Modladlaba said.
“I told them last year already that they would not be permanently employed,” he said.
Thursday’s protest did not disrupt services at the hospital; however, free movement in and out of the hospital was compromised.
More than half a dozen police were called to the scene to defuse the protest.
“The department has committed to investigate the matter to ensure that the issues that they raise are properly addressed,” Modiba said.
The interns said they would not yield because they had everything to lose – their livelihoods.
Maputla said after the meeting: “We have discussed all the allegations in the meeting, and we have agreed that these need a thorough investigation,”
Modladlaba said: “There is an agenda that is being driven by the unions against the hospital management and they are using these volunteers to fight the management.” The interns, however, denied this.
He also accused the interns of eating patients’ food and other “nonsensical things” which he did not elaborate on.
According to a source who was at Thursday’s meeting, Modladlaba had roped in the interns under the Expanded Public Works Programme or Public Works Programme, under which they would be entitled to some pay.
The National Education and Allied Workers Union leadership at the hospital declined to comment, saying only that they might comment in the future. DM