DURBAN - Chaos erupted outside Pietermaritzburg’s Northdale Hospital on Wednesday when nursing staff from two trade unions united to oppose a memorandum of demands handover by members of the Health and Other Service Personnel Trade Union of SA (Hospersa).
A small group of Hospersa affiliates marched from Lahore Grounds to the hospital to hand over their memorandum calling for the dismissal of Buhle Maphanga, the hospital’s chief executive.
In February, the hospital was put into the spotlight after claims of religious intolerance.
It was alleged that Maphanga and seven hospital board members demanded that a nursing sister, who was the hospital’s operations manager, clear out her cupboard.
A box was found which contained religious items including an incense stick, a statue of Hindu deity Lord Muruga and a framed photograph of Sai Baba.
On Wednesday Popson Kunene, Hospersa provincial secretary, handed over their memorandum to Mark Green, acting district manager at Northdale Hospital. Green said the hospital would respond to Hospersa’s requests in due course.
After the handover, the small group dispersed, and members of the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) and Democratic Nursing Organisation of SA (Denosa) staged their own protest, supporting Maphanga and calling for the hospital’s operations manager to be removed.
Nurses carried placards that called for religious rites to be conducted outside of working hours and off the hospital’s property.
A nurse then lit impepho (an indigenous African plant that, once dried, is burned to communicate with one’s ancestors), while another “cleansed” the parking lot with water which had been prayed over by a traditional healer.
Skhumbuzo Mdlalose, Nehawu’s provincial chairperson, said: “This is a public place where there are patients. One cannot be burning agarbatti (incense sticks).
“In 2007, she (the operations manager) said some racist things to nurses and she was never charged. We are saying we respect and tolerate any religion, but not when practices are done at a public institution,” he said.
Mdlalose stated that more than one member of staff had brought the matter of the operations manager burning incense sticks to the attention of Maphanga.
Jerome Zwane, Denosa regional chairperson, said while they welcomed all religions, it was not right to put one’s religion above the treatment of patients.
“The hospital management was very relaxed and now that Maphanga is here, she has changed the status quo at the hospital, and this is just an attack on that,” he said.
The operations manager was present at the Hospersa demonstration and declined to comment. She said she feared being charged for speaking to the media. Kunene said the woman had not returned to work since the incident.
At the time of the incident, the Department of Health said it was conducting an investigation into the claims.
It had not responded to a request for comment at the time of going to print.