TRC Final Report

Volume 4

Chapter 5

Subsection 10

■ MEDICAL SCHOOLS

58 Medical schools played a significant role in perpetuating human rights abuses. Black people were systematically prevented from obtaining training in the health sciences and, even where this was allowed or provided for, received an inferior quality of education to that of white students. Medical schools failed to teach ethics and human rights. Professors in medical schools held dual appointments with both the state and the medical schools, leaving them vulnerable as health professionals with dual obligations. Finally, with a few exceptions, medical faculties did not speak out about the unethical nature of apartheid medicine and its adverse effects on training and patient care.

Admission for training in the health sciences

59 Opportunities for black South Africans to become health care professionals were extremely limited in the case of doctors and mental health professionals; although far less so for nurses. Before World War II, no black doctors were trained in South Africa. None of the medical schools in South Africa would admit black students and all black doctors received their training overseas. There does not appear to have been any statute preventing medical schools from accepting black students; it simply did not happen. Some of the schools claimed that it was because they did not have the facilities (such as separate residences) in which to accommodate black students.

60 The outbreak of World War II ended overseas training. From that time, a few black students were admitted to the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) and the University of Cape Town (UCT). However, very few black doctors were trained until 1951, when the University of Natal in Durban (UND) Medical School was opened exclusively for black students.

61 In 1959, the University Extension Act was passed, requiring black students to obtain ministerial consent before they could attend a white university. This made it very difficult for black students to enter any medical school other than UND and, in turn, for many aspiring medical students living outside Natal (as it was then) to attend medical school. UND was far from their homes and many did not have the financial resources to pay accommodation and travel expenses and academic fees. A small number were, however, able to attend white universities if they could convince the Education Ministry that extenuating circumstances prevented them from attending UND. The number of black medical students increased from the early 1980s, after the Medical University of Southern Africa (MEDUNSA) was established. This was part of the apartheid plan to keep blacks (especially Africans) out of white universities, while at the same time ensuring a supply of black doctors to care for the black population.

62 The lost opportunities that resulted from the University Extension Act are impossible to quantify, although one can say with certainty that numerous black people were kept out of the medical profession. Between 1968 and 1977, for example, 86 per cent of all newly qualified doctors were white, while white people comprised less than 20 per cent of the population. By contrast, 3 per cent of the new doctors were African, while Africans constituted 71 per cent of the population (see Figure 2).³²