TRC Final Report

Volume 4

Chapter 5

Subsection 18

South African Nursing Council (SANC)

117 Similarly, it is evident that nurses did not feel that their statutory body, the SANC, or their professional organisation (then the South African Nursing Association) offered appropriate or adequate guidance and support for nurses who found themselves in situations where human rights were abused.

118 The SANC admitted in its submission:

We further acknowledge and accept without justification that Council was influenced by the policies of the government of the day. This could have resulted in both a conscious and unconscious perpetuation of those discriminatory policies and legislation, leading to gross violations of human rights.

We are aware that Council was all the time morally bound to adhere to a strict professional approach to matters of nursing, without allowing itself to be used as a tool of the apartheid machinery.

We appreciate that Council could at times have exercised a free discretion on some of the issues.

We therefore wish to apologise unreservedly both for conscious and unconscious activities that could have had the effect of undermining human rights from time to time.

119 According to the DENOSA submission, there was, over the years, no accountability within the profession to pledges or other codes studied by nurses. This is underscored, for example, by the long-standing acceptance of section 49 of the Nursing Act (no 69 of 1957), which made it an offence for white nurses to be subordinate to black nurses.

120 Other ‘failures’, raised by the SANC include:

a Only white persons could serve on the Council.

b While the SANC was aware that there was segregation in health treatment along race lines, which vitiated the nurses’ pledge, it apparently made no effort to protest against this.

c Where victims of accidents were denied emergency treatment on the scene because of their race, the SANC made no efforts to confront this situation.

d The SANC failed to react to gross inequities in the provision of training facilities for the various population groups.

e When former political prisoners and detainees made allegations against nurses in prisons and other hospitals, the SANC failed to conduct proper investigations.

f Appointments of staff in the categories of typist/clerk and upwards were almost exclusively limited to whites. There was no effort on the part of SANC to empower members of the disadvantaged communities.

121 These admissions on the part of the SANC make it unsurprising that nurses failed to respond more vigorously to the human rights abuses with which they were confronted. Where leadership failed to lead on issues of human rights and, at times, was seen to sanction and support apartheid policies and practices, those in subordinate positions would have needed unusual courage to protest, particularly when threatened, as was Ms Betty Ncanywa, with loss of employment.