Chairperson, what I said is the truth. If the chief executive officer of any hospital stood up and said there were five deaths due to the strike, he needs to stand up to determine that. I am talking scientifically here - that even during normal events, to determine somebody's death you need to hold an inquest and take note of many other observations.
Does this mean that if there were 10 deaths in a hospital during a strike those deaths were necessarily due to the strike? That's a very tricky thing. But the fact that he said this even to the media does not necessarily determine that I must come to this House and say that in George Mukhari we had 10 deaths and in that hospital we had 5 deaths. I am just saying that this is an issue that will need a very thorough determination and inquest.
On the issue of essential services workers, you are aware - and this has been in many papers - that there was an issue about doctors who were on strike. No doctor went on strike. Nobody! There is not a single doctor who went on strike for the whole three weeks. But the newspapers reported on this everyday.
They showed them toyi-toying even in cartoons, but all of them were at work. I worked with some of them for the whole night. They never went on strike, and they declared it to be so.
We now come to the issue of nurses and the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa, Denosa. Officially, Denosa never called for a strike. We spoke to them and they said they never called for any strike, but that they were being stopped and intimidated. Many of the health workers in essential services will actually stand up and say so.
Now, you are aware that the issue of essential services and the service level agreement is a contested issue. It is still being debated in the Chamber at this point. I can't give the final results here.
People are saying this issue has been on the table for the past 10 years, since long before some of us were there. They say there was no general agreement about essential services. It was intended that if there are essential services, there must be a minimum service level agreement. This is still an issue of debate. So, as a department, we have not yet reached finality that so-and-so were on strike and that they were supposed to render an essential service, so they must be punished. But I know statutory bodies do so ... [Interjections.] [Time expired.]