South Africans Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi criticises Zimbabwean politicians for seeking medical help abroad

South Africans Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has criticised Zimbabwean politicians for seeking medical help abroad.

Motsoaledi, who headed the Home Affairs department until June 2024, said this during an ANC address.

“Our Neighbours Just Close Their Eyes”

He narrated how eSwatini has an arrangement with South Africa, where it refers its citizens if it faces complicated medical situations. eSwatini has a medical aid for its citizens that allows them to get medical treatment in South Africa for critical cases.

Motsoaledi said other “neighbouring countries” should emulate this instead of letting their people to jump the border Illegally.

He criticised:

“Other neighbours close their eyes and just let their people cross the borders. If you don’t have food and money that your neighbour has, for goodness’ sake, why don’t you ask your neighbour that, ‘Neighbour, we are hungry’? You can’t just throw them away to your neighbours and close your eyes. It’s unfair.”

The health minister also decried how Zimbabwean citizens cross into Limpopo in droves for simple procedures like blood transfusion. He poked at how leaders ignore their health systems and seek assistance abroad:

“Part of the reason is that Heads of State on this continent, and it’s the only continent, when they are sick, they go to other continents, leaving their nationals alone. And that must stop. If you go to Musina, you will find that 70% of the women who are delivering there are from Zimbabwe.”

In 2017, during a health ministers conference in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, Motsoaledi bashed African Presidents who travel abroad for treatment. Then-Zimbabwean President, the late Robert Mugabe, who had become a serial medical tourist, stood and walked out of the meeting in protest.