TRC Final Report

Volume 4

Chapter 5

Subsection 11

Disparities in the education of black and white medical students

63 Although the various South African medical schools were quite different from one another, they displayed strong similarities in their patterns of racism and the often overtly degrading treatment they inflicted on black medical students.³³ In general, black students were excluded from sports facilities and most social events. Accommodation was not usually offered to black students, which meant that they had to spend much time and money commuting. Where accommodation was made available, it was far inferior to that available to their fellow white students. Tearooms and changing rooms at hospitals were also segregated, and facilities for black students and professionals were inferior.

Personal experiences of Dr Ahmed Moosa at the University of Cape Town

There were no African students on the UCT Campus [when Dr Moosa attended medical school]. The only African people working there were people who were employed as labourers and as assistants maybe in some of the laboratories.

All the residences were closed [to black students]. You couldn’t stay on the campus no matter where you lived. The clubs – all academic or social clubs – were closed … There were sports facilities, but those were segregated.

This lack of integration continued throughout our medical school years ... In anatomy, in the second year of study … all the black students were separated into a smaller lab.

In third year, the autopsies that we attended … they would only show black bodies if there was a mixed class. If there was a white corpse that had an interesting pathology, these corpses were eviscerated in an anteroom and the organs from these bodies were brought in and displayed to the class. You weren’t even allowed to see a white corpse.

During our clinical years … the tutorial groups that we were in were separated along colour lines … We couldn’t work in the white wards in the obstetrics wards … the white side of the hospital was a ‘no-go’ area for students of colour.

The separation of doctors continued throughout our internship years. There were separate residences. There were three or four white interns with us – they had a separate dining room. There was obviously the very sore point of differential salaries.

64 Even the training received by the few black students who were admitted to white medical schools was in some ways inferior to that of their white colleagues. While the lecture halls were not actually segregated, some of the practical training was. It is important to note that there was no legislation enforcing this discrimination; it simply became accepted practice at the medical schools. Black students could not attend postmortems on white cadavers and, at many medical schools, black students were not allowed to examine white patients. This changed in the mid1980s when they were allowed to examine those patients who gave consent. Even after this, many hospitals maintained a policy preventing black students from examining white women in the obstetrics and gynaecology wards.

65 Black students had to do their clinical training in black hospitals, whereas white students could choose from any of the teaching hospitals. Since most of the training institutions are attached to white hospitals, black students had to travel long distances for their training. Heads of department usually chose to be based at the white hospitals, which limited the access of black students to the best and most experienced teachers. Since black hospitals lacked the resources of the white hospitals, many of the black students felt that they were deprived of the opportunity to use new technology or to see ‘first world’ diseases.

66 Conditions in the black hospitals were often horrific, which in itself hampered proper ethical treatment of patients. As one former student told the Commission, “it’s difficult to teach ethics in an unethical environment.”³⁴

Dr Solly Rataemane’s personal experiences of post-graduate training at the University of the Witwatersrand

Our lectures and clinical work (in neurology) took place in the Wits Department of Neurology … One afternoon, Dr Rangaka and I were the only two postgraduate students who attended the clinical session. The senior specialist would not give us a patient to assess. We were told that she was protecting us against embarrassment, if the white patients were to refuse being examined by black doctors. It was clear that we were only allowed to examine these patients in the presence of our white colleagues, who would explain that we are also doctors.

I was allocated a rotation at … one of the white centres providing training in child and adolescent psychiatry. On the eve of my commencement at this centre, a senior member of the Department of Psychiatry phoned me to inform me that I would not be going to that centre, as the superintendent of the centre was white and racist and he was not happy to have black doctors interview white children and white families. My anger at the Department and the University was immeasurable.