Won’t Have Black Doctor

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 86, 2 July 1927, Page 5

Won’t Have Black Doctor

Nurses Strike at Mafeking Hospital The colour question, never long absent in South Africa, again manifested itself recently in an acute and unexpected form. The nurses of the Victoria Hospital, Mafeking, are all Europeans, and resigned in a body as a protest against the action of Dr. Molema, a native, sending his European patients, some of whom were women and girls, to the hospital and operating on them there. The nurses objected to taking orders from a native doctor, or no doctor, and they went on strike. Dr. Molema qualified at Glasgow in 1919, and later was assistant surgeon at the Coombs Hospital in Dublin. The stand taken by the nurses received much support from South Africa in general, and Nationalist members of Parliament representing Transvaal constituencies sent a telegram highly appreciating their attitude. A prominent Free State Nationalist member of the House of Assembly sent the nurses a message expressing the hope that-' their “admirable attitude will result in the termination of the intolerable practice of Europeans approaching native doctors.