ActionSA in Gauteng has raised concerns over the data used by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) to conclude that foreign nationals are not linked to overcrowding in public hospitals.
During its Imbizo, SAHRC said its data did not support claims that foreign nationals were occupying the majority of hospital beds.
“The statistics that we have gathered does not show or confirm that foreign nationals are really, really occupying the majority of beds in our hospitals. I will talk about Limpopo, simply because we visited the hospitals, we checked the registers and we checked how many foreign nationals whether legal or illegal — we checked if indeed, how many… we just decided to check for the period of 3 years and we found that the number that was coming out, otherwise were lesser than stats from the hospital were found they were not accurate. But we received the information from the department to check and we found that the statistics is very low,” the commission said.
But ActionSA argues that the data, which was collected during a localised investigation in Limpopo in 2022, does not reflect the pressures faced by hospitals in other provinces, particularly Gauteng.
ActionSA Gauteng Health and Wellness spokesperson Emma More has called on the commission to conduct province-by-province assessments before drawing national conclusions.
“They should have done a separate research per province, to be honest, not even to say nationally, do this analysis and then use the average and conclude. Not only use the issue of Dr Phophi when she was actually speaking to that patient from Zimbabwe and say okay let’s check data and they said they found that the data was telling the opposite. But the same data they gave us actually not telling what wanted to prove,” More says.
In a statement dated 4 June 2026, More said the commission’s written explanation contained what she described as factual inaccuracies, mathematical inconsistencies, and attempts to alter the narrative presented during the Imbizo.
ActionSA said the commission’s own data contained contradictions. The commission’s letter reportedly stated that Mokopane Hospital admitted 2 080 patients between June and August 2022, with 114 non-nationals accounting for 5.5 percent of admissions. However, ActionSA said the data ledger provided by the commission showed 233 foreign nationals admitted in June 2022 alone and a further 333 in July 2022.
The party also points to figures from Messina Hospital, where it said 2 558 foreign nationals were admitted between February and July 2022, compared to 1 135 South African patients over the same period.
ActionSA further questions the relevance of sources cited by the commission, including a 2015 University of Cape Town law thesis, a 2013 survey, and a 2025 qualitative study involving only 15 migrants.
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