By Zenoyise John:
When a virus knocks at your door, it won’t ask for your ID. Let’s be honest: there is fear in our hospitals. Fear of overcrowding, fear of under-resourcing, fear that there’s not enough for “our own.” But what happens when that fear leads us to make decisions that put everyone – citizen and migrant alike = in danger?
When a sick foreigner is chased away from a clinic, some may feel justified. But let’s pause. What if that patient had tuberculosis? What if they had a contagious strain of meningitis? What if they had Ebola? When they are denied access to care, they don’t disappear = the danger simply shifts location, quietly multiplying among the very communities we claim to be protecting.
South Africa has always carried itself with pride as a beacon of human rights – a nation forged in the fire of injustice, but determined to become a place where dignity matters. But lately, we are drifting.
We’re forgetting who we are, and worse, we are forgetting what we survived.
Many South Africans know what it’s like to be denied care, to be told your life matters less because of where you come from or how you look. How can we now repeat that same injustice on someone else – simply because they crossed a border?
If we begin to gatekeep access to life-saving treatment, based on documentation or nationality, then we’re not building a better South Africa. We’re simply reproducing the cruelty that once oppressed us.
Here’s the truth: most migrants come to South Africa not to steal, but to survive. Some are fleeing war. Others are escaping famine, collapsed health systems, or brutal regimes. Many are professionals – nurses, teachers, builders – who now wash our dishes, guard our shops, or clean our streets, hoping to build a better future.
When that person gets sick, and we turn them away, we not only sentence them to suffering, but we strip ourselves of empathy, and empathy is the soul of any healthy society.
A virus doesn’t ask: Are you legal? Bacteria don’t wait for your immigration papers. Mosquitoes don’t care what country you were born in. Outbreaks don’t read headlines – they only respond to conditions.
Turning away patients isn’t just a violation of human rights – it’s a ticking time bomb. When sick people aren’t treated, diseases spread in silence. By the time the headlines hit, it’s too late.
Do we really want to learn this the hard way = with ambulances full, hospital wards overwhelmed, and fingers pointing in every direction except where they should?
This is not about putting foreign nationals above South Africans. It’s about protecting everyone. It’s about ensuring that no one becomes a walking outbreak because they were denied help.
It’s about a healthcare system that functions not on fear, but on foresight. Not on exclusion, but on evidence-based public policy. Not on hate, but on humanity.
We must ask the uncomfortable question:
If your child collapsed in a foreign country, would you want them chased away from a hospital?
If you got sick while seeking a better life, would you want people to treat you as if your pain were less real?
The measure of a nation is how it treats its most vulnerable. The sick. The displaced. The voiceless.
And right now, South Africa is being measured. And the world is watching. – @NewsSA_Online
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