When in danger or in doubt, run around in circles, scream and shout!
In her statement today, the hon Chikunga highlighted the following: On 16 March 2011, the DA provincial health spokesperson, Faiza Steyn, was quoted in the Sowetan as having said that the pregnant woman from Khayelitsha was turned away from the Michael Mapongwana Hospital because -
'... she was not in active labour ... She was advised to come back later when she felt contractions, but she never did. The nurses had done nothing wrong.' She said most of the time pregnant women came to the hospital thinking that they were about to give birth, when it was a false alarm.
'It was unfortunate that she gave birth a few hours later,' Steyn said.
This is a ridiculous, dangerous and fatal statement. Or, is it a case for the DA of - now in the words of Paul Farmer -
If access to health care is considered a human right, who is considered human enough to have that right?
It is a case of, if you are from Khayelitsha, Mitchells Plain, Langa, Atlantis, then bad treatment or no treatment or all is not wrong in the eyes of the DA provincial and city government.
The budget allocation and spending in the City of Cape Town is another example of some groups' rights being more important than those of others. In the wealthy suburbs of Cape Town we see cycle lanes being built, while in Langa, Khayelitsha and Gugulethu, people do not even have pavements to walk on.
The Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of religion, yet we have seen the DA government in this province demolishing churches in Khayelitsha. Or is it a question of who is considered human enough for these rights?
The right to the protection and promotion of cultural life is guaranteed in the Bill of Rights yet, in the Western Cape, funding for the minstrels' celebration of the rich history of slaves is stopped by the DA government.
In the by-laws capital, otherwise known as Cape Town, where even your dog's barking is regulated, by-laws and the enforcement thereof are used to seriously undermine the rights of our people and, in many instances, it is nothing more than harassment.
The Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Police was witness to hawkers trading on an open field. They were not trading on the street, or in a business area, but Metro Police then confiscated their goods, all of it perishable. This happened on a Wednesday. Now the by-law determined that they could only receive their goods back on the following Tuesday, after paying a R100 fine. Not only does the DA take food from families, they also deny citizens the opportunity to make an honest living.
Chairperson, we cannot allow the DA or any other counter-revolutionary force to roll back the gains for which many laid down their lives ... [Interjections.] ... and which we are still daily working to achieve. [Interjections.]