Up to 13 South African medical students share a single bathroom in their residence in Havana, spend days without running water, and fall ill from the food in the cafeteria, according to an investigation by the newspaper Daily Maverick published this Wednesday.
The affected individuals are part of the Nelson Mandela-Fidel Castro (NMFC) program, established nearly three decades ago as a result of a bilateral agreement from 1996, aimed at providing access to healthcare for young South Africans from disadvantaged communities.
A student who arrived in Havana in December 2024, and who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, described her experience from the very first day to Daily Maverick: "I wanted to study medicine with all my heart... we arrived at the school, they put us in quarantine and it was horrible."
During that initial isolation, she couldn't take a shower. "The water, when it arrived, came in intervals, and there was only one bucket. There were seven of us girls. I got really depressed. There was no food," she recounted.
The conditions did not improve after leaving isolation. Regarding the shared bathrooms, he explained that flushing the toilet is impossible: "You have to go fetch water with a bucket to empty the toilet."
The food consists of rice with a broth so diluted that he described it in a single phrase: "The water is the soup of the rice." The meat caused him rashes and gastrointestinal issues, so he decided to buy bread with his own money.
"I come from a home in poverty. I know what poverty is, but this is worse than my own situation at home," she stated.
The monthly stipend of approximately 200 dollars, loaded onto a local card, loses value drastically due to the exchange rate.
When the students demanded a raise, the department paid for two months together instead of increasing the monthly amount. "That $400 should be for one month, not for two," the student replied.
The spokesperson for the South African Department of Health, Foster Mohale, admitted to the Daily Maverick that the agency has not conducted any supervisory visits since 2022.
"No supervisory visits have been conducted since 2022, mainly due to increasing financial pressures and strict austerity measures," he stated.
Mohale attributed the conditions to the U.S. embargo: "Cuba is currently facing significant difficulties, largely as a result of the intensified U.S. embargo, which affects almost every aspect of daily life."
However, the crisis that the island is experiencing — power outages, shortages of water and food — is a direct consequence of decades of management by the regime, and equally affects Ghanaian graduates stranded in Cuba with six months of unpaid stipends and Jamaican students who reported power outages of up to eight hours a day.
The program is also facing scrutiny in the South African Parliament. The Democratic Alliance parliamentarian Haseena Ismail warned that the program's reliance "raises serious questions about the cost, value for money, and whether public resources are being used in the most efficient manner, especially in light of the deeply troubling conditions in which some of our students find themselves."
The parliamentarian of the Combatants for Economic Freedom Noluvuyo Tafeni added that in 2025 there were 303 unemployed graduates despite a state investment estimated at 606 million rands.
"This situation is a failure of state planning and an enormous waste of public investment," he stated, in a context where South Africa's agreements with Cuba across five government departments amount to an estimated 1.425 billion rands.
Mohale indicated that the amount of the stipend was discussed at a Joint Academic Meeting held in July 2026 and that consultations with the decision-making bodies are still ongoing, with no specific date set to resolve the situation.
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