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The ANC's Medical Trial Run: the Anti-Apartheid Medical Service in Exile, 1964 to 1990 [Melissa Armstrong]

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The ANC's Medical Trial Run: the Anti-Apartheid Medical Service in Exile, 1964 to 1990 [Melissa Armstrong] The ANC’s Medical Trial Run: the anti-apartheid medical service in exile, 1964 to 1990 by Melissa Diane Armstrong A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History with Specialization in Political Economy Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario © 2017, Melissa Diane Armstrong ABSTRACT South Africa’s current ruling African National Congress (ANC) government inherited a relatively well-developed healthcare system that was steeped in institutionalised racism. The apartheid era created the conditions for poor health and provided poor healthcare for black South Africans. However, little research has been done on the history of health and healthcare provision for the South Africans who were exiled by the National Party in 1960 and more specifically on the medical sector developed by the ANC for exiles in civilian settlements and military camps based in newly independent, sympathetic nation- states in southern Africa. The exiled South Africans were affected by the legacy of colonialism, exposed to the repression of apartheid and were subject to the first efforts of the ANC’s medical sector and (eventual) Health Department while they were in exile. Indeed, many health professionals who filled leadership positions in the post-apartheid Department of Health were trained in exile and had been a part of the medical sector in the liberation struggle during some portion of the thirty-year period that the ANC was in exile. This medical sector formed in exile is the subject of this dissertation. The history of the ANC’s medical sector in exile sheds new light on the importance of health to the international legitimacy of the ANC but also to the individuals whose lives were at risk in exile. Moreover, it begins to show that the ii Department of Health was also a product of apartheid in the sense that it emerged as a political response to the inequalities in South Africa and was forced to contend with exiles that had been damaged by the South African system. Attempts to understand the post-apartheid National Department of Health in South Africa must first contend with this history of health and healthcare in exile. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Throughout the research and writing of this thesis, I was met with generosity, graciousness, and support from close friends and complete strangers; both were essential to the success of this project. The Department of History and Institute of African Studies at Carleton University have been supportive and encouraging from day one. Over the last four years, the Department of History’s faculty and staff have offered moral and financial support and carved out opportunities for me to succeed and for that, I am grateful. Special thanks to Joan White for her attention to detail and genuine desire to help me to meet deadlines and June Payne at the IAS for her sense of humor, love of sushi and interest in tabata. Many thanks to my Carleton University student cohort in the History Department. Will Tait and his partner Jennifer Gosslin were incredibly hospitable and supportive. I will forever be indebted to them for all of those Sunday dinners. I was fortunate to have been in the same PhD student intake as Stuart Mackay and Meghan Lundrigan. They have been good officemates, excellent sounding boards and more importantly, great friends. I am also grateful to Matthew Moore. I benefited from his resolve to hit the gym and his down-to-earth outlook on life. Additionally, I was lucky to share the same supervisor as Christine Chisholm, Dahay Daniel and Candide (Nyondo) Mawoko. All iv three of these ladies have definitely shaped my academic and non-academic experience in Ottawa for the better. Outside of Carleton University, this thesis benefited from the assistance of three important individuals. Special thanks goes to my Auntie Sharon Westberg, for her meticulous work with her red pen. These acknowledgements will have suffered grammatically because she did not get a chance to edit them. Perhaps one day, I will learn the definition of a “hanging gerund” and be able to place commas appropriately on my own. Additionally, thanks must go to Kelly Humphrey for her support through the whole four-year process and for slogging through an early draft of this thesis and providing much needed feedback. I also appreciate Becky Hartley for her willingness to block off hours to work or study amidst our busy baseball schedule in the summers. I am grateful that we both strive to have our cake and eat it too. I gratefully acknowledge the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship for their financial support. This scholarship gave me the opportunity to complete multiple research trips to South Africa and have ample time to search the archive in a thorough manner. With the scholarship, I was able to devote my time undividedly to the research and writing stages of this thesis. This research benefited from the expertise of many scholars. I am especially grateful to Colin Bundy for his guidance during the early stages of my research on the ANC in exile while I was a Masters student in 2012/13. His enthusiasm for and interest in the topic was very encouraging. Additionally, I want to thank Hugh Macmillan, Jonny Steinberg, Jocelyn Alexander, Michael Panzer, Carla Tsampiras, Theresa Eldmann, and Robert Shell for either commenting directly on aspects of this work or generously sharing v their own research with me. Thanks also must go to my thesis defense committee Thula Simpson, Jim Opp, James Milner, Candace Sobers and Susanne Klausen for their generous engagement with this work and thoughtful suggestions for revisions leading up to the final submission. I am particularly grateful to the staff at the ANC archive at the University of Fort Hare for making me feel comfortable and at home in the archive. I am especially thankful for the assistance of archivists Ike Maamoe and Vuyo Feni-Fete. Not only were they able to offer their assistance to find needed files, they were also considerate enough to keep me informed about the level of safety on campus during the university student strikes in 2015. I also appreciated Ike’s willingness to keep the archive open late so that I could continue working as needed after business hours. South Africans are among the most warm, open and welcoming people that I have ever met. When I first arrived in Johannesburg to start this research in 2013, I was picked up by Tristan Gevers, a friend of a friend from Oxford University; we had never previously met. Tristan brought me back to his home where I met his parents Ron and Rozanne and three sisters, Stephanie, Melissa and Caitlyn. Since then, the Gevers have become like family; I came and went from their house often enough in the past four years to have been given a key to the front door. They have included me in their family outings; painstakingly explained the finer points of cricket and rugby to me; taken me to the doctor; helped me to buy, register and license a car; and most importantly been open, honest and completely without pretense. Without the reassurance of their love and hospitality, I may not have had the nerve to continue the project. vi I was greeted with a second outpouring of kindness in the Eastern Cape. After contacting a local church in 2013 and asking if someone in the congregation had the gift of hospitality, I was pointed, without hesitation, straight up the hill in Grahamstown to the Robertson’s house. There, I was greeted by Sue and Ian Robertson and their daughters Laura and Emily. I have stayed with the Robertson’s for many months between May 2013 and February 2017 while commuting from Grahamstown to Alice to visit the archive. Everyday I returned to their home to enjoy an already-prepared hot meal, warm fire and great conversation. Once again, I was welcomed in like family and have been treated as such ever since. I have learned so much from Sue and Ian and appreciate them more than they will ever know. Without their love and support, the months of archival research in the Eastern Cape would have been unbearably lonely. There are no words to express how grateful I am for the patient and insightful supervision of Susanne Klausen. I have had ample opportunity to be made aware of how lucky I am to have worked with her. I could not have had a better supervisor for this project. Over the course of four years, she has written me nearly eight hundred emails in order to provide references, administrative updates, research advice, thesis corrections, encouragement/much-needed moral support, and details for hiking Table Mountain in South Africa together. Needless to say, I have not been a neglected student and I am thankful for that. She has challenged me to be a better researcher and writer. But most of all, I am grateful to her for reminding me that writing history is not an academic exercise but an act of social justice. And… no matter where I end up, we will always have Bloemfontein’s Emoya and the charging rhino experience. vii Thanks goes to my three sisters Krista Friesen, Kerri Korol and Andrea Gonzalez and cousin Jenn Doerkson along with their families for unflinching support and unconditional love. I could not have done this without them. I am also grateful to my Grandma Wilkinson for her twice-daily prayers and passion for debate; I am confident that even now, after she has passed away, she is celebrating this thesis submission with me.
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