‘Political stunt’: Mixed reactions to Gauteng jobs campaign and what it means for healthcare

Jack Bloom, DA MPL in the Gauteng Provincial Legislature. (Photo: Gallo Images / Papi Morake)

By Thabo Molelekwa for Spotlight

26 Sep 2023

In June, the Gauteng government launched an employment drive called Nasi iSpani. Spotlight spoke to people in the public health sector about what this could mean for the province’s chronic healthcare worker shortages.

In June this year, the Gauteng government launched a major recruitment drive called Nasi iSpani. As explained on Business Live by Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi, the Nasi iSpani programme is part of “Growing Gauteng Together 2030”, a strategy adopted in 2019 to create an economically inclusive Gauteng city region.

gauteng jobs campaign lesufi ANC Gauteng Premier and provincial chairperson Panyaza Lesufi. (Photo: Gallo Images / Luba Lesolle)

“We want to position the province as a place of opportunities and grow its economy from R1.7-trillion to R3-trillion, halving unemployment to reach 15% by the end of the decade,” wrote Lesufi.

According to Statistics South Africa, in the second quarter of 2023, the unemployment rate in the country stood at 32.6%. In Gauteng, it was 34.4%.

The Gauteng government says that through the campaign, thousands of jobs will be offered, ranging from drivers, receptionists, cleaners, artisans, construction managers, communication officers, health practitioners, agricultural advisers and engineers, to chief financial officers.

A political ploy?

Some, however, have labelled Nasi iSpani as nothing more than a political stunt before next year’s national and provincial elections.

gauteng jobs campaign healthcare

The Economic Freedom Fighters and Action SA have both asked questions, and leading political commentator Justice Malala has referred to the initiative as a “jobs scam”.

Lesufi has rejected such suggestions.

Rich Sicina, President of the Health and Allied Workers Indaba Trade Union, says that the programme does not address the staffing gaps in Gauteng’s public health sector.

“This Nasi iSpani programme is not a genuine job creation programme. It’s a political stunt. It’s electioneering by the ANC because they see that they have lost the plot. And that 2024 is around the corner.

“Why is this programme now and not four years ago?” he says.

“Nurses are sitting at home as we speak… doctors are sitting at home as we speak. We need general workers in our system. We need allied workers, radiographers and kitchen staff. We need a lot, hence we are still complaining about the gross shortage of staff as far as health is concerned.”

Sicina tells Spotlight it also worries him that National Treasury has announced cost containment measures that include, among others, the freezing of posts.

“But all of a sudden, the Gauteng government has money to employ thousands of people every month, which raises the question of where the money comes from.

“Where will they get money to employ the people they are talking about?”

Read more in Daily Maverick: Desperate job seekers queue at Nasrec, as Gauteng government launches Nasi Ispani campaign to recruit 8,000 workers

Jack Bloom, health spokesperson for the Democratic Alliance in the province, stresses that there is a real need to fill skilled medical positions in the Gauteng Health Department, including nurses, doctors and specialists.

However, he tells Spotlight that community health workers have already been made permanent workers, so there is little scope to expand employment there.

gauteng jobs campaign bloom Jack Bloom, DA MPL in the Gauteng Provincial Legislature. (Photo: Gallo Images / Papi Morake)

“Some of those on the special Covid contracts were retained, but not all. The Nasi iSpani programme is largely an ANC election ploy that diverts attention from ANC mismanagement and corruption that ruins our health system,” Bloom says.

Prof Judith Bruce, Visiting Professor at the School of Therapeutic Sciences in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Wits University, is also not happy with this kind of recruitment.

“As far as I know, this is not the way nurses are recruited into the health system, and actually, nursing should not be considered as a way to ‘alleviate poverty and unemployment’ in our country, which is what I believe the Nasi iSpani programme is all about.

“It spells very bad news for the profession, patients and the community,” she says.

Others were more optimistic.

Bongani Mazibuko, the Gauteng Regional Chairperson of the nursing union Denosa, said the programme mitigated what was a dire shortage, although there were still gaps.

“The gaps in the healthcare system will not be corrected until they address the issues of the staff complement and how [many] personnel are needed to offer services at the different institutions,” said Mazibuko.

“We have received reports of newly appointed nurses who have since joined Denosa, and we know that not all posts have been filled yet.”

According to Mazibuko, the programme has done what the union has always wanted – for all vacant funded posts to be filled.

“The premier [started] a good initiative. Now the department must address the problem of the organogram.”

According to him, the department must update the organogram and be specific about how many nurses are needed in which hospitals, and also be specific in terms of the categories of nurses – for example, how many specialist nurses; how many enrolled nurses are needed.

He further says that services have been extended in most hospitals, but staff has not been augmented.

“You have fewer people trying to do a lot more than they can manage,” he says.

According to Dr Sue Armstrong, a lecturer at the Department of Nursing Education at Wits and chair of the Nursing Education Association, there are newly trained nurses who have not been employed after their community service year, which is a tragedy as there is an acute shortage of nurses.

“The reason given by the government is that they do not have the finances to employ them, and now the German government is employing our nurses when we really need them.

“So, I guess if there is funding available through this project, it does have the potential to assist, but if the government does not have the money, and the premier is part of the government, why does he have the money [for all this employment]?

“We are not training sufficient nurses at present… have not for some time now. And the situation is worse since the change in nursing curricula, which in turn required accreditation from the SA Nursing Council… this is happening at a very slow rate for a multiplicity of reasons”, says Armstrong.

“We need a longer-term funding plan for nursing together with a concerted joint effort by all stakeholders to resolve the problem, but if there is a short-term injection of cash, it may be useful in the short term to get some nurses back into the system.”

But Russell Rensburg, director of the Rural Health for Advocacy Project, says, “To date, I haven’t seen any evidence that previous initiatives have led to more employment within the health sector.”

According to Rensburg, it needs to be clear where the budget line is and what process the Gauteng government is using to appoint all these health workers and those employed during the pandemic.

Gauteng Health responds

Motalatale Modiba, spokesperson for the Gauteng Health Department, says the kind of health-related jobs being filled through Nasi iSpani include clinical and clinical support, nursing, administration and administration support. He says the jobs range from entry-level posts to highly technical ones.

gauteng jobs campaign healthcare

“All departments are an extension of the Office of the Premier as they implement the programme of action agreed to by the Premier and his Members of the Executive Committee. The Department of Gauteng Health and Wellness and the Office of the Premier are working together to identify funded vacancies that must be filled to enhance service delivery in the health facilities around Gauteng province,” says Modiba.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Young people in Gauteng have signalled that the days of empty political rhetoric are over

Currently, according to Modiba, as a result of Nasi iSpani, “there are as many as 8,000 community healthcare workers who were appointed permanently by the department. The estimated budget for the said posts is R22,550,108 [and these] posts are budgeted under the Cost of Employment budget.”

He tells Spotlight that of the healthcare workers who were employed during Covid, more than half were given new contracts earlier this year in line with the grant funding that the department received from Treasury.

“The plan by the department is to fill all the vacant funded posts,” he says.

“All former Covid-19 employees, including those who were given contracts from the grant fund, were encouraged to apply for the Nasi iSpani advertised vacancies.” DM

This article was published by Spotlight – health journalism in the public interest.

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A political ploy?

Gauteng Health responds