Two days before health rights groups the Treatment Action Campaign, Medecins Sans Frontieres and Kopanang Action Against Xenophobialaunched an application at the South Gauteng High Courton November 25, seeking an order to force the state to ensure safe access to hospitals and clinics, and remove anyone trying to keep people out, the vigilantes behind the healthcare blockades threw up their middle finger to justice. “No court in South Africa will stop Operation Dudula,” the group’s Facebook post read. “They will have to arrest us all.” Based on the Gauteng High Court’s most recent ruling on Thursday (4 December), the police may have to do just that.
The previous ruling on 4 November interdicted the xenophobic group, Operation Dudula, from blocking foreign nationals from theirconstitutional rightto healthcare, a right that applies to everyone living in South Africa. For months, vigilantes have been harassing and intimidating those they deem foreign nationals, demanding ID books and passports and blocking them from entering hospitals and clinics. Section27, acting forMédecins Sans Frontières,Treatment Action CampaignandKopanang Africa Against Xenophobia, headed back to courton 25 November, because problems at particularly the Yeoville and Rosettenville clinics in Johannesburg have remained.
Judge Stuart Wilson ordered the Yeoville and Rosettenville clinics in Johannesburg, the City of Johannesburg, Gauteng and national health departments and police to remove anyone hindering access to foreign nationals at the two clinics, make sure there are enough trained security personnel at all access points to ensure that the court’s order is carried out, and to, within five days of the court ruling, post notices at all entries to the clinics that read: “No unauthorised person may obstruct or hinder physical access to this clinic or the provision of healthcare services within the clinic. Any person violating this instruction will be removed from the premises and its surrounds and reported to the police.” The same institutions also have to report all incidents and unauthorised people on the premises of the Yeoville and Rosettenville clinics to the SA Police Service (SAPS) and take “all reasonable steps” to identify them. TheNational Health Actsays that anyone not on medical aid is entitled to free primary healthcare services (generally services offered at clinics), regardless of nationality; pregnant and breastfeeding women, and children under the age of six are entitled to free healthcare services at both clinics and at hospitals.
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Refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented people from theSouthern African Development Community, which includes 16 member countries in the region, are entitled to an income-based evaluation to determine the extent of subsidisation they can get from hospitals. “Xenophobia is one of the greatest threats to democracy and human rights we presently face,” Judge Wilson warned in his ruling.
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