SA rejects claims of Cuba trafficking
A report by Trafficking in Persons states that Cuba benefits financially from ‘coercive’ labour export programmes to 66 countries, including 187 medical workers to South Africa
The South African government has distanced itself from human trafficking allegations regarding its exchange agreement with Cuba, maintaining that no direct payments for workers are made to the Havana government.
The 2022 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report alleges that the Cuban government “may have forced 187 Cuban medical workers to work in South Africa” to help combat Covid-19.
“These agreements typically require payment directly to the government of Cuba, which gives the medical workers between five and 15 percent of the salary only after they complete the mission and return home,” it says.
There are 268 Cuban workers in South Africa; 243 health professionals and 25 engineers, according to the departments of health and water and sanitation, under which the workers are employed.
Foster Mohale, the spokesperson for South Africa’s health department, said the salaries of all employees — including Cuban staff — are paid directly into their bank accounts.
“No money is paid to Cuba for these employees who work [in] SA under the agreement, [they] receive their salaries in bank accounts accredited in South Africa and the South African government has never made any direct payment to the Cuban government.”
Cuban healthcare workers employed in South Africa are doing so under a 2019 agreement between the two countries, which is effective for five years.
“The agreement considers that there may be an exchange of doctors from Cuba to South Africa and from South Africa to Cuba if required,” said Mohale, adding that healthcare workers who came to the country in 2020 to help fight Covid-19 also did so under the 2019 pact.
Water and sanitation spokesperson Sputnik Ratau said the 25 Cuban water specialists contracted by the department under the international cooperation in the field of water resources agreement between the two countries were paid directly.
Each Cuban worker is paid a gross salary of R63 661.25 a month, he said.
Responding to the report’s allegations of human trafficking, Ratau said Cuban employees were subject to South African labour laws, “which always espouse fair labour practices.
The agreement also espouses fair administrative processes to Cubans employed in the department.”
The TIP report found that the Cuban government profited from labour export programmes, which showed “strong indications of forced labour”, particularly its foreign medical missions programme.
Cuba remains on tier three of the watch list of the TIP rankings for the third consecutive year.
This means the country does not meet the minimum standards for eradicating trafficking according to the United States Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
“The government made some efforts to prevent sex trafficking, particularly child sex tourism, but did not make any efforts to prevent forced labour,” reads the report.
The report identified other “similarly coercive” labour export programmes for engineers, teachers, artists, athletes, sports coaches, forestry technicians and about 7000 merchant mariners in 66 countries, including South Africa.
In 2021, government profit estimates
from labour export programmes ranged from $6-billion to $8-billion, of which 75% was from its medical missions programme.
The report claims that the Cuban government misled participants by telling them the labour programmes are voluntary.
But, according to the report, the passports, professional credentials, and salaries of the workers are confiscated and their families threatened should they leave the programme.
Their movement in foreign countries is allegedly limited and they are overseen by minders accompanying them, the report said.
“In almost all accounts, workers receive only a portion of their salary ranging from five to 25 percent. These funds are retained in Cuban bank accounts — often in Cuban pesos rather than the hard currency the government is paid for their services, which are relinquished if the participant leaves the programme.”
Last year, 1111 alleged victims of trafficking brought a complaint before the International Criminal Court and the United Nations, “claiming the Cuban government was responsible for exploiting them and forcing them to work in Cuba’s labour export programmes”.
In March this year, the United States court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit determined that the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), the regional office for the Americas of the World Health Organisation, “must face a lawsuit by Cuban doctors accusing it of helping arrange a programme in which they were compelled to work in Brazil against their will, violating human trafficking laws”, Reuters reported.
The TIP report, summarising the events leading to the lawsuit, outlines how Cuban medical workers participating in Brazil’s Mais Medicos programme claimed the PAHO had played a role in their alleged exploitation.
The Cuban doctors say “they were forced to work by the Cuban government, as part of a triangular arrangement facilitated by an international organisation” understood to be PAHO.
Steve Reid, a founding member of the Rural Doctors Association of South Africa and director of primary health care at the University of Cape Town, was one of the doctors who worked with Cuban healthcare workers during the first wave of Covid-19.
He worked at the temporary Covid-19 hospital at the Cape Town International Civic Centre, where about 20 Cuban medical workers were for a short time.
“I got to know some of the doctors, and they were definitely there voluntarily. Actually more than voluntary. They saw it as a calling, a sense of duty,” said Reid, dismissing the idea that they might have been forced.
“They were a wonderful group of people. They had this sort of spirit of ‘we got to help’. They had no sense of being forced among them. None of us knew what was going to happen [in 2020], there was a sense of impending disaster, and here the Cubans arrived with ‘let us help’.”
He recalled how the Cubans had pronounced that “they are here for the revolution”. The doctors had a “revolutionary spirit” and “sense of adventure”, he added.
Reid, who also served on the panel that interviewed Cuban applicants to work in South Africa from 1996 to 2012, says the doctors they interviewed were “definitely volunteers”, adding that he knew some of them “very well”.
Although he is not involved in the evaluation or appointing process, Reid provides medical training for students as part of the Nelson Mandela/fidel Castro Medical Collaboration Programme between South Africa and Cuba, which started in 1997.
He noted that Cubans had a different political culture where people must follow the rules and, by South African standards, it might seem “quite oppressive”.
Referring to the specific allegations in the TIP report, Reid said: “I think it is much more complex than what the report is making out.”
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said it had not received complaints of human trafficking incidents in South Africa or its member states.
“We however avail ourselves to supporting the member states on any human trafficking and migrant smuggling issues, with the aim of protecting migrants and offering victim-centric, human rights responses,” said Jane Ongolo, the representative for UNODC in South Africa.