Members will be aware that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) called for submissions from the broad medical community and its organised bodies earlier this year. The TRC invited input on the role of organisations such as ours in either contributing to or resisting human rights abuses during the apartheid era. Although the PSSA indicated its willingness to appear before the Commission, this offer was declined by the TRC as the time allocated for submissions was short and many rather more high profile cases from the past demanded priority. Nevertheless, the PSSA has resolved to prepare a written submission, and SAAHIP has thus put together this contribution to the process. The submission should be seen as complementary to that prepared by the Interim Pharmacy Council, a submission "on behalf of pharmacists registered in the country". The SAAHIP submission was prepared by the Vice-President, on the basis of input provided by members, and ratified at a meeting of the National Executive.

An association such as SAAHIP exists to protect the interests of its members, but should also, as a professional body, consider the impact that it can have on the lives of those persons with whom its members come into contact in the course of their professional lives, in other words their patients. It can therefore be argued that SAAHIP should have taken a stand on at least the following issues of relevance to human rights:

working conditions and treatment of its members; and

the standard of service delivered to patients.

Many members will attest to the fact that working conditions for hospital and institutional pharmacists, in the State sector at least, were discriminatory in nature. Black pharmacists who entered the profession in the late 1960s and early 1970s and even later had difficulty obtaining apprenticeship or internship positions. Once employed in such positions, these pharmacists earned salaries which were racially based. Such staff were designated by race, for example as "temporary non-white pharmacists". Access to hospital amenities such as staff tearooms was also often based on race. Promotion prospects were limited, for example with the first Black senior pharmacist in the Cape only being appointed in 1978. While it is not clear to what extent such matters were brought to the attention of the Association, it is apparent that little concrete action was taken and SAAHIP did not take a principled stand against the authorities on behalf of its members. The IPCSA submission has dealt with the issue of Council’s actions in terms of discriminatory salary determinations. Likewise, SAAHIP’s contribution is overshadowed by the efforts of individual pharmacists in State employ, some of whom were members, but who acted as individuals in fighting for the salary parity which was achieved only in 1981. In KwaZulu-Natal, for example, the efforts of the late Mr Colin Lowther are remembered with pride. As an organisation however, SAAHIP can only admit that it did little in response to this flagrant abuse of fellow professionals.

Perhaps a better example of the prevailing attitude in the Association can be gleaned from a single high profile case from Durban. As the climate of oppression intensified in the early 1980s, many activists were detained by the security forces and held without being charged. One of these was the Durban pharmacist, and now Member of Parliament, Mr Pravin Gordhan. The local branch committee was asked to take a stand in this regard, by demanding that the authorities either charge or release Mr Gordhan. This the committee was unwilling to do. Mr Gordhan was finally dismissed from provincial employ for being absent without leave. This illustrates the perception amongst many members of their inability to confront a hegemonic authority for whom they worked, in whose military structures they perhaps performed occasional duties and whose wrath they were unwilling to attract. Viewed from a professional and ethical perspective, SAAHIP can only show contrition for its lack of courage and its patent inability in the past to protect the interests of the members for which it exists.

In the case of the acceptance by members of the status quo regarding discriminatory treatment of patients, the evidence is even more damning. SAAHIP members worked until very recently in a health system which was organised on racial lines, with glaring disparities between the standards of facilities made available to different racial groups. The words of one pharmacist when questioned about this recently ring true: "Somehow it was just something I accepted". She returns to this theme later: "and it was something I accepted as being part of a government hospital that was perhaps not big enough and brave enough to go against government policy". Individual professionals of all types who sought and accepted employment in the State sector did so in the full knowledge of the policies which prevailed at the time. This argument has been used by a member of judiciary in explaining the actions of judges: former Chief Justice, Mr Michael Corbett writes: "The courts had no option but to apply the law as they found it, however unjust it might appear to be". The same cannot however be said of a professional body which was not directly reliant on state patronage. Again, looked at from professional and ethical perspectives, SAAHIP should have and did not take a stand on those practices which might have resulted in altered therapeutic outcomes as a consequence of racially-apportioned resources or facilities. However ham-strung structures such as the Pharmacy Council were (it should be borne in mind that is only in the Pharmacy and Medicines Amendment Bills currently before Parliament that these laws are being made binding on the State), the onus was on organisations such as SAAHIP to make known their disquiet with the implications of apartheid health policies. Instead they appear to have accepted abuses of human rights as part of the professional landscape and worked silently within the system.

It is the hope of the National Executive that this short document will not only serve as a piece of the "truth", buried in the files of the TRC as part of the larger PSSA contribution, but will contribute to a climate of reconciliation within the Association. While it is difficult to bring this document to the attention of those members who were alienated from the association by its lack of attention to human rights issues, who perhaps resigned their membership or still feel less than welcome in its ranks, the National Executive would ask all branches to highlight its existence at branch meetings. This will stimulate debate on local issues which remain unresolved, furthering the aims of reconciliation and nation-building. The contrition expressed on behalf of the members of SAAHIP by means of this submission should not remain only in the minds of those who contributed to its content or who approved it at a national level, but it should permeate the consciousness of the entire organisation and of every member. SAAHIP adds its commitment to that expressed by our Council, a commitment to "the process of rebuilding this country based on human dignity, the achievement of equality, the advancement of human rights and freedom, non-racialism and non-sexism, as expressed in the Constitution".