When qualified medical doctors march to force the government to give them jobs, then South Africans should know that the centre no longer holds.

Incompetence and misplaced priorities can best justify the failure to employ the hundreds of doctors sitting at home, while the shortages in public hospitals are often cited as the reason patients spend hours waiting to be attended to.

That this crisis has become an annual occurrence points to an uncaring culture within the health department and by extension, the entire government.

The government cannot expect the public to be satisfied with the story that there isn’t enough money to accommodate all the unemployed doctors.

We need not remind this administration about the billions it has pumped into SOEs, even when it was hard to justify those decisions.

We need not remind Health Minister Joe Phaahla and his boss President Cyril Ramaphosa about the millions the country spent procuring Covid-19 vaccines that later expired and had to be destroyed.

The powers that be need no reminder about the billions of Covid-19 emergency funds that made their way to ANC-connected people – some of them in government – instead of helping boost our health care, including absorbing these very medical doctors who are today forced to take to the streets to demand employment.

Phaahla’s announcement that he and his Finance counterpart, Enoch Godongwana, were close to finding a solution to this problem is welcome but does not solve the underlying problem, which will be there next year.

The story of doctors having to live from hand to mouth should alarm all South Africans.

A State that takes the health of its citizens seriously would not have to be forced to employ the people that will make that goal a reality.

If anything, this failure not only betrays the values that formed the foundation this country was built on, but also goes against the very Freedom Charter that this government seeks to realise.

That is why critics of the NHI, despite its good intentions, are justified in their argument that it will be disastrous under the current government.

Cape Times