Cape Western branch’s new gambit against SAMA

The 10-month-old battle between the SA Medical Association, SAMA, and its’ Cape Western Branch, (CWB), has intensified with the branch laying a formal complaint against SAMA with the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission, (CIPC).

The CWB claims the SAMA Board is illegally and undemocratically constituted and has no grounds upon which to suspend its members, nor bring disciplinary hearings against them for alleged misuse of funds. The SAMA Board imposed these sanctions last year after the CWB used some of its allocated funds to take legal advice on their (the board’s) legitimacy.

The CWB claims the Board has transferred elective power away from National Council to an AGM by altering the Memorandum of Incorporation, (MOI). It says this ‘unilateral’ action was taken without consulting (or calling) a National Council at which four of the now eleven board members were elected in 2018. Board members remain in office despite their tenure having ‘expired’ 18 months ago when council ‘should’ have met for elections. (Council have historically met every three years.) The SAMA chairperson and vice chairperson are sitting in acting capacities after the resignation of Dr Angelique Coetzee as chairperson in February last year.

A leading SA law firm, (as in the one contentiously hired by the CWB), backs the view that the Board should stand down and allow the more representative national council to hold a proper democratic election.

SAMA’s members turned down the proposed Board changes to the MOI at the AGM last year, questioning the AGM’s legality and process. The CWB contends that, having failed to change the election process, the Board stubbornly refuses to call a National Council, (relying on and citing the Companies Act).

Late last year, the Board suspended all CWB members, many of them seasoned veterans, cut all communication channels and banned them from using the CWB premises in Pinelands, threatening to fire admin staff should they allow them access.

The branch, among 22 nation-wide, was removed from the SAMA website, threatened with charges of theft, and had all funds suspended. Since then, the dispute has simmered, with the CWB last week demanding to know whether the Board considers itself to have a prima-facie case against them, and if so, whether hearings will be held against the branch collectively or individually. No definitive answer has been forthcoming.

The SAMA Board contends that the MOI allows it to rely on the AGM to constitute itself.

Chairperson, Dr Mvuyisi Mzukwa, has denied that the CWB branch suspension is illegal, saying, ‘they clearly breached policy by not limiting spending to issues within their geographical boundaries.”

Acting on the advice of the influential SAMA company secretary, Charissa Carpenter, Mzukwa said anyone who took issue with the MOI or actions of the Board and felt inadequately responded to, should lay a complaint with the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission.

Observed one SAMA insider, “the fundamental issue is that the Board is being badly advised by those who don’t understand what a professional association is all about. They put the emphasis on an incorrect and narrow interpretation of the Companies Act – inappropriate for a non-profit company. The board members are repeatedly reminded about their fiduciary duties, but this is misdirected. Their duty is to the Association and its members, not to the Board.’

Several attempts at mediation, with Board members flying to Cape Town to meet the CWB late last year, failed. A commission ruling may now overtake a potential arbitration hearing or prevent the laying of criminal charges.

The CWB wants their suspensions, now ten months old, lifted. It sees them as an attempt to ‘cancel and silence us,’ – and wants a national council called to allow members to discuss the issues.

One?AxessHealth?source said the CWB felt the Board was being ‘incorrectly, and probably incompetently” advised by employees who had ‘much to lose should due diligence be conducted.”

The 96-year-old, 11 000-member association is the country’s largest doctor collective. It faces pressing medico-political issues such as potentially fatal power cuts to hospitals, career-impacting Certificate of Needs legislation, the overhaul of the country’s healthcare system, the criminalization of doctors involved in adverse patient events, and the growing threat of thinly spread doctors burning out in a poorly-served, burgeoning post-Covid population.

By Chris Bateman