Bully Ramathuba finally forced us to address the Zimbabwean elephant in the room

Limpopo health MEC Dr Phophi Ramathuba’s recently videoed tongue-lashing of a Zimbabwean patient for free-riding on “her” hospital services was bullying of the worst kind.

She should not only be fired but she should be severely disciplined by the Health Professions Council. Neither will happen. Far too many in the ANC agree with her sentiments, if not her manner.

But Ramathuba’s disgusting outburst has an upside. It signals that the long suppression by the ANC and a politically correct media discussion on whether millions of people should freely and illegally flock to an imagined SA Eldorado from sh*tholes elsewhere on the continent, is well and truly over.

So, to start, let’s not mince words. Forget the euphemisms of “undocumented visitor” and “economic migrant”. They’re “illegal foreigners” and it has nothing to do with prejudice or abuse. It’s a simple legal definition. That’s how they are described in our Immigration Act of 2002, which replaced the extraterrestrial, other-worldly connotations of the Aliens Act of 1991.

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Illegal immigration is one of the most emotive issues in politics throughout the Western world. It pits the cherished beliefs of privileged left-wing elites against the growing anger – fanned by expediently populist politicians – of the working classes and unemployed whose interests they claim to have at heart.

Their embattled ideology – that foreign nationals crossing borders, despite not having the requisite documentation and despite not being asylum seekers or in imminent physical danger at a time of conflict – should be met with warmth, forgiveness and public benefits. Their mechanism for killing any debate on the issue is to vilify as xenophobic any resistance to illegal foreigners.

On the contrary, it is the suppression of debate that fuels the frustration of ordinary citizens, who feel displaced in their own land. And it’s the pompous pieties of those who are not at the sharp end of the influx that gives firebrands the flammables with which to stoke violence against the kwerekwere.

It’s an issue on which the ANC has swung 180 degrees. Before 1994’s first democratic election and until recently, the song sheet has been one of brotherly love, especially to those bordering nations that paid a high price for harbouring ANC exiles.

But it’s not an either-or situation. There are compelling economic reasons to facilitate migration by skilled workers, just as there are compelling moral reasons to embrace political refugees and asylum seekers. The caveat is that both streams need to be legally regulated.

Ramathuba is absolutely right. It is not acceptable that in some hospitals, something in the region of 80% of all babies delivered are to mothers who have crossed into SA to take advantage, without paying a cent, of our superior medical services. Hence, the public anger.

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The SA Medical Association’s response is that healthcare is an absolute, fundamental human right. Healthcare is, of course, a human right. But it is not an absolute right. As our Constitutional Court has ruled, it’s a right qualified by the constraints of budgets and resources, and the competing demands of others in need of medical attention. That’s a universally recognised reality.

No country in the world allows untrammelled access to its medical resources to foreigners. The angry dispute about illegal foreigners is just the beginning of it. This is an issue that is soon going to be even more the focus of political scrambling for advantage.