‘The patients scattered’: how gun crime cuts off healthcare for South Africa’s poorest

Khayelitsha hospital in Cape Town. Medical staff have been the target of several robberies and extortion attempts in recent years. Photograph: Courtesy of hospital's emergency medicine team

The three gunmen showed up just 10 minutes after the security guards had arrived for the early morning shift. Tshiamo Nere* admits he was “frozen” with shock and could only stare as the men aimed their weapons at him and two colleagues at Khayelitsha’s Town Two clinic in Cape Town, as screaming nurses and patients fled.

They had a message, the men told the unarmed guards. “They demanded a protection fee from the security company that employs us to guard the clinic,” Nere says. “The patients, frightened, scattered; and nurses ran for their lives.”