The storm in a doctors’ tea room

Our world view is formed not from a spreadsheet, an ordered set of analyses. It’s more drawn from a looseleaf folder, messily crammed with vignettes.

But it’s often such trifling sketches that best encapsulate a person, a situation, a nation. The storm around three young Western Cape doctors is one of those nominally minor matters that turns out to illustrate deeper realities.

It’s certainly a keeper for my loose-leaf folder, to be filed under any of SA’s worst public service failings – workplace pettiness and spite, bullying and envy; organisational dysfunction; gutless leadership; and legal over-reach.

The three interns – Doctors Mathew de Swardt, Kim Morgan and Manie Domingo – all at various stages of anaesthetics specialisation at Tygerberg, had scavenged from an outdoor dump of written-off, broken hospital furniture, two weathered chairs.

The motivation was that with some TLC, the two rain-rotted items could be resuscitated. They would have a new life in the doctors’ tea room, which the ringleader of this band of desperadoes, De Swardt, had been sprucing up, out of his own pocket.

Then came the bureaucratic shit-storm. Although the trio had verbal permission, they were charged with theft. A kangaroo court, masquerading as a departmental disciplinary hearing, was set up. Despite an array of witnesses testifying to the veracity of the doctors’ account, the findings were harsh.

El Capo De Swardt was summarily dismissed. His henchmen, Morgan and Domingo, were sanctioned to a month’s and a fortnight’s unpaid leave and given written final warnings.

As the SA Society of Anaesthesiology pointed out, De Swardt would not be able to complete his training and the public service careers of two senior registrar anaesthetists had been sullied. Although Domingo had by now left the public service, he would not “escape the clear implications of a guilty finding”.

It’s tempting to skewer the hearing’s chair since, on the face of it, she was either unusually incompetent or dancing to a political tune.

But rather the buck should stop with the executives of Tygerberg and Western Cape Health. That’s where the dimple-arsed managerial drones hum lazily, sipping their own tea from dainty china cups in cosseted comfort.

It was under the uncomprehending, glazed-eyes watch of these useless functionaries that this all took place. What a dereliction of oversight on their part; such a failure of character.

The response to the harsh sanctions was explosive. After TimesLive broke the story, it rocketed around the social media world to widespread disbelief and anger. A hastily launched petition, demanding the doctors’ reinstatement, garnered 16,000 signatories in a couple of days.

Western Cape Health hastily retreated. On Wednesday, just days after the furore went viral, they backed down. The verdicts were reversed – reduced to written warnings.

Attorney Michael Bagraim, who acted on behalf of De Swardt and Morgan and is also a DA shadow minister, takes pleasure in quoting the Latin maxim that translates, “the law does not concern itself with trifles” – meaning, in this case, there was never any credible charge deserving of such a draconian legal response.

Clearly so. But on the positive side, this was a “trifle” that explains, in a snap, why the public service is bleeding professional staff and why many doctors are contemplating emigration.

William Saunderson-Meyer.

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