Johannesburg – The General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA) has “strongly condemned the xenophobic campaign” to deny migrants access to healthcare at state hospitals and clinics.
GIWUSA said there has been an escalation in the campaign to stop immigrants from accessing clinics and hospitals.
In a statement on Tuesday, 12 August 2025, GIWUSA said it “strongly condemns this xenophobic campaign led by Operation Dudula, March and March, Action SA, the Patriotic Alliance, and other far-right groups denying migrants access to healthcare”.
The union added: “These attacks are not only a violation of the most fundamental human rights but a dangerous diversion from the real crisis in the healthcare system, a crisis created by neoliberal austerity, corporate looting and profiteering, corruption, and mismanagement.”
Three members of Dudula spent the weekend behind bars after they were arrested for allegedly storming the Lilian Ngoyi Clinic in Soweto on Women’s Day, 9 August 2025.
Speaking to reporters on Monday after the three women were released on warning, Dudula Leader Zandile Dabula vowed to continue preventing ailing foreign nationals from getting treatment at state health facilities.
“South Africans are happy with what we are doing,” said Dabula.
All three women complained that they were treated badly while behind bars. They did not elaborate on what they went through.
“But when our people get arrested, this is the treatment they face while foreigners roam free,” Dabula lamented.
GIWUSA said it was true that the clinics, hospitals, and other healthcare services in working-class communities were failing the poor, including the elderly, children, disabled, and chronically ill people, who have to endure long queues.
“Equally, they fail everyone with shortages in staff of critical healthcare professionals, including doctors, dentists, nurses, and specialists, lack of essential equipment, beds, and medicines,” the union stated.
“However, the underlying cause of both the crisis in the healthcare and the rightwing backlash scapegoating migrants for the crisis is the fracturing and weakening organisations of the working class.”
GIWUSA said this “weakness of organisation” was responsible for disunity and poor capacity to fight back, which in turn has allowed the state to divest and privatise public services.
“At the same time, it has demoralised the working class and opened a wide vacuum for all sorts of political opportunists and populists to scapegoat the crises on the most vulnerable layers of the working class, the migrants,” GIWUSA said.
The union also warned that xenophobia was a “weapon to divide the working class”.
These reactionary movements, while posing as “defenders” of South Africans, serve only to:
- Scapegoat migrants for problems caused by austerity measures, corruption, and capitalism, which they are part of.
- Break working-class solidarity by turning workers and the poor against each other instead of uniting against the real enemies: private healthcare monopolies, profiteering medical aids, bureaucrats, and tenderpreneurs who loot pitiful allocations and a government that has abandoned public health.
- Justify brutal exclusion to leave wealth in the hands of the rich while the same elite access world-class private care.
“We reject this poison,” stated GIWUSA.
“Migrant workers are part of our class — exploited, underpaid, and struggling alongside us.
“Our fight is not with each other, but with the system that keeps healthcare a privilege for the few and a site for the accumulation of capital.”
GIWUSA explained that the real crisis was a healthcare system “designed to fail the poor’.
The union said the collapse of public healthcare was not caused by migrants.
GIWUSA instead blamed “Neoliberal Austerity and Privatisation” for the problems with the state healthcare system.
The union said the facts were damning, including:
- 51% of health funding (R570 billion/year) goes to private healthcare for just 14% of the population (mostly wealthy).
- Public healthcare, serving 86%, gets only 49% of funding — starving clinics of staff, medicines, and equipment.
- R100 billion in public money subsidises private healthcare (R33bn in medical aid tax rebates + R70bn for state employee schemes).
Profiteering Corporate Healthcare Monopolies
“In the meantime, the privatised healthcare has not resulted in a ‘competitive free market’, but monopolised system,” GIWUSA said.
“In other words, state monopoly has giving way to the private owned big corporate monopolies strictly interested in profit and nothing else.
“The level of concentration, monopolisation and abuse of this power for super-profiteering is staggering.”
GIWUSA said Netcare, Life Healthcare, Mediclinic control 87% of private beds, driving up costs through profiteering.
The union claimed Medical aids waste R28 billion/year on “admin fee” — enough to build 40 new hospitals.
“This means that the state can actually afford to build and sustain new hospitals in every district in this country,” said GIWUSA.
“Corrupt tenders, outsourcing, and austerity have bled the clinics and hospitals dry, as well as ‘capturing of hospitals and clinics’ through underqualified and corrupt ‘deployments.
“As a result of these the healthcare system is grossly underperforming in comparison to other countries at the same level, if not below, and for the amount of money spent on it.”
The union warned that South Africa’s health outcomes were among the worst for middle-income countries.
“The working class must lead the fight for universal healthcare,” GIWUSA said.
“Not only do we condemn but actively oppose this campaign and affiliated organisations.”
As an alternative to this dead end, GIWUSA called for:
- A stop to xenophobic attacks – Healthcare is a human right for all, regardless of nationality
- Fight for NHI – But on the basis of a Working-Class programme to:
- Nationalise private hospitals (Netcare, Life, Mediclinic) to integrate their R77.4bn/year profits into public healthcare.
- Expropriate medical aid schemes (R218bn/year) to fund new clinics, more staff, and free medicines.
- No to two-tier NHI! Healthcare must be free, universal, and under democratic worker-community control.
- Tax the rich to fund healthcare – Make capital pay for the crisis it created
- Organise the Fightback!
GIWUSA urged other trade unions to take up healthcare as a key class struggle.
- Community movements to defend clinics and resist xenophobia.
- Migrant worker organisations to unite with local workers against exploitation.
- Youth and students to fight for a future with dignity.
“Forward to a Socialist Healthcare System – Free, Quality Care for All,” GIWUSA stated.
