I was impressed when I first saw the new building at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital. It replaced some old structures including a dreadful pharmacy where patients queued for many hours. But months later I visited again and the medicine queue looked even worse.

It flowed right out the new pharmacy down two long corridors and even up a ramp to the second floor. There weren't even chairs for elderly sick patients who were often told to come back the next day.

Some people were there for the fourth day running even after arriving very early. I was amazed that such hardship had been endured for so long without being exposed in the press or some kind of protest action.

Middle class people would have kicked up a fuss immediately, phoned up radio stations and harangued members of parliament. Poor people are disempowered in many ways, but part of it is a fatalism that nothing will improve by complaining.

Perhaps hardship is best endured by resigning oneself to it, otherwise the alternative is to be permanently angry. Most public hospital patients have to be very patient indeed.

Very often they are scared to speak out because they fear being victimized. And what option do they have if they are totally dependent on public health? Feelings do sometimes boil over. Patients at the Dr George Mukhari Hospital in north west Gauteng recently went on strike.

They refused food and medicine for two days until they got an assurance that their fractured bones would be operated on. Many had lain in the orthopaedic ward for two weeks awaiting surgery. It is horribly sad that such desperate action had to be taken to get the attention of management.

I get stories all the time of quiet tragedies in hospitals that would hit the headlines in any western country. For instance, a poor woman living in a hostel suffered a condition after botched surgery where faeces came out her vagina instead of her anus.

She was given an early date for an operation, but an ignorant clerk changed it so that she would only be seen six weeks later.

If I had not intervened by contacting the hospital CEO, she would have spent Christmas with her frightful condition. But how many cases like this happen all the time without intervention?

I suppose it is like our high crime that we get "used to", so that we glaze over yet another baby rape or atrocious murder. It does not have to be like this. First, patients must speak out.

I encourage people to use the complaints desk at hospitals and the health hotline at 0800 203 886.

Poor nurses can be reported to the Nursing Council and the Health Professions Council will investigate complaints against doctors. We should never accept substandard service as the norm in any area. Schooling, for instance, would improve if parents held lazy and incompetent teachers to account.

The best remedy, though, is at the ballot box. Endless patience is not a virtue when it comes to politics. If you want shorter queues at hospitals then politicians and parties that don't perform should be thrown out. Otherwise don't complain when you get the government you voted for.

Jack Bloom is a DA member of the Gauteng provincial legislature. This article first appeared in The Citizen.

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter