SACP Western Cape welcomes the progressive intervention against DA's paradoxical thinking

The South African Communist Party (SACP) in the Western Cape welcomes the direct intervention by the Minister of Health, Dr Aron Motsoaledi, on the training of prospective medical students in Cuba. This intervention will ensure that students from the working class and poor families in the Western Cape will receive medical training in Cuba as it has been the case in all other provinces (see here).

It has always been an ongoing appalling reality that working class students in the Western Cape have systematically and vindictively been excluded from this progressive programme of training medical students in Cuba. It was through the neoliberal government of Helen Zille that this programme, which is of dire need in the Western Cape in order to address a lack of trained medical professionals, was abruptly scrapped.

The decision completely void of reason. The illogical "justifications" given were further evidence of a completely contradictory agenda, as hospitals servicing the poor such as Mowbray Maternal, Somerset, Khayelitsha and New Mitchells Plain respectively are in desperate need of doctors. It is empty excuses and reactions such as this that the neoliberal government of the Democratic Alliance in the province continues to reflect its anti-majoritarian stance towards workers and the poor in the province.

As the SACP we championed past attempts to rectify this, and ensured our young students in the province are afforded an opportunity to study medicine in Cuba. Surely the recent show of internationalist bravery and commitment by the Cuban Government during the Ebola epidemic is evidence of the positive role Cuban trained medical professionals are playing in society.

We once again applaud Minister Motsoaledi for this progressive development that will not only afford the opportunity to educate and train prospective medical professionals in our province but will also develop a contingent of young internationalist thinkers. The SACP in the province further rejects the DA government's ideological reactions and excuses which clearly sponsored by external counter-revolutionary forces.

Statement issued by Masonwabe Sokoyi, SACP Western Cape Provincial Spokesperson, April 8 2015

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