JOHANNESBURG. Thousands of striking nurses have agreed to return to work, promising to be merely indifferent to seriously ill patients rather than openly murderous. Meanwhile, the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU) has hailed the strike as a success, saying that handicapping a million schoolchildren helped create thousands of aggressively stupid failures who can go on to become SADTU leaders.
Last week thousands of nurses went on strike, staging the biggest mass walkout since 3pm the previous Friday when word spread in Gauteng that it was 2-for-1 Friday at Chippy’s House O’ Lard Burger ‘n Waffle Hutch.
Since going on strike, nurses have campaigned tirelessly to win the sympathy of the South African public, mainly by letting the South African public die slowly in hospital parking lots and shrieking at passing cars.
According to Sister Fistula Zulu, who has been ignoring patients for ten years at the Saint Negligencia of Misery Day Clinic in Soweto, the strike has been an opportunity to show patients what nurses really thought of them.
“To us you are more than just a number or a chart,” she said. “You are vermin and must be crushed.”
Sister Attila de Hun, head guillotine operator at the Our Bedpan Runneth Over Mission Hospital in Pretoria, agreed with her sentiments.
“Pay me what I’m worth, and I’ll swear at you, change your linen once a year and laugh when your catheter falls out, just like any other nurse,” she said.
“But ignore my demands, and I’ll get really nasty.”
However, this morning Zulu, de Hun and thousands of other nurses agreed to return to work, promising to be merely indifferent to patients as long as the government didn’t expect them to administer any sponge-baths.
Meanwhile, SADTU, also known as Bantu Education Redux, has hailed the strike as a resounding success and an investment in its future.
“SADTU is all about the three R’s,” explained spokesman Chalky Witbooi. “Rights, retribution and riots.
“Every child who leaves school having failed Grade 7 for the third time, that child is a future SADTU regional commissar, so yes, we’re pretty chuffed at the outcome.”
He added, however, that the union would keep fighting for ‘Vision 2012′, an education paradigm in which school inspectors would be dropped out of aeroplanes into volcanoes and where SADTU-affiliated teachers would be allowed to spend Monday through to Thursday in bed before appearing briefly on Friday for some remedial sexual harassment with the Grade 9′s.
“We have a dream,” he said, before raising his fist and shouting, “Fornication and libation before education!”
