There are many things that signal the virtue of cowardice. A prolonged and deep reliance on patriotism is just one of them. To say that the South Africa in which we now live is a project in progress is to deny two things. Firstly that the republic is the same republic as from 1961 and […]
NHI
Posted inHealth
Reflections of an intern psychologist burning out in a public hospital
By Jordan du Toit There was a strike at Bara yesterday. Someone from Soweto came to watch and said, “Ask anybody here in Soweto and they will tell you they don’t want to go to Bara because they might come back in a coffin”. I couldn’t go to the protest. I was literally too busy […]
Posted inHealth
It’s time for a new class of medical doctor
In my last post here I made the observation that I practice medicine in a fee-for-service private system that is dysfunctional. Consumers of healthcare are the obvious losers, being subject to the perversions of the current system that translate into significantly higher cost. I stated that one of the drivers of this system is that […]
Posted inEquality
Black people are poor, not stupid
I am terribly annoyed by academics and political analysts in this country. It has become a Herculean task for me to even read their works and research based on the conditions of black people, particularly in the townships and rural areas. Most of these academic papers and articles, whatever issue they deal with, however different […]
Posted inGeneral
NHI: infected with doubt
Health systems news and health systems financing news, in particular, seldom get the nation talking. But the announcement of the imminent arrival of National Health Insurance (NHI) on our shores, and the subsequent release of the policy paper on the NHI, certainly did. And rightly so! For a country that spends a respectable percentage of […]
Posted inGeneral
Who am I?
I was born at Mamelodi Day Hospital in 1985. At a time when the apartheid government was getting anxious about the longevity of their antics, when the people were realising that perhaps they could really beat this thing, when everyone, white and black alike, could feel that the air was different. There were many of us […]