South Africa a 'sick' state

2005-10-03 10:25

Trouble is we have become home to all sorts from the African continent, and many of them unfortunately bring with them what they learned from the countries that they fled. And they find very willing pupils among some of us.

At the grave risk of sounding very vain, the above line is a quotation from the column I wrote last week.

I find it rather fitting to use in support of the many observations that I have regarding our sorry state in this country.

I am very angry and shocked, as I am sure many of you are, at the unhealthy state of our society, and I intend no pun.

What started off as one minor case of typhoid in Delmas, Mpumalanga, has been allowed to balloon out of all proportion and is now clawing its way into our lives in Gauteng, and continues to spread.

Pretty soon, heaven forbid, the country could face tremendous problems, which given the government's lackadaisical approach to the TB and Aids epidemics thus far, is quite possible.

'Eat spinach!'

In case you have forgotten or missed it, the president says people must not drink contaminated water, and his health minister reckons they must eat spinach and swallow Matthias Raath's vitamin pills, to ensure they don't get Aids!

But the mess in our country goes much deeper than that - we have a totally arrogant government that couldn't care one hoot about us.

A few days ago health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang had a first-hand glimpse of the pathetic lot of our people when she and provincial health MECs visited Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital.

There they discovered that patients at the world's largest healthcare institution have to deal with atrocious conditions.

There is no bed linen and there are long queues for medicines at the Glynn Thomas dispensary outside the hospital. Very ill patients have to stand in queues for hours on end.

She of the African potato and olive oil brigade was, for a surprisingly healthy change, touched and angered by what she experienced. She voiced her condemnation loudly, and declared that she would not want her family to be patients at the hospital.

Vote of no confidence

One could say the minister was having her first true experience of a "world-class African hospital".

But having no confidence in the service she runs is a little like a cook, say Daisy de Melker, offering you her meals but wanting to eat none of it!

But if the minister was so shocked and shaken by this single episode she experienced, does it mean she and the government members who were not on that trip have been thinking that many of us have been telling lies all this time about the horrendous state of our government-run hospitals and clinics?

In fact, does that Baragwanath hospital incident somehow explain why the minister and her president, among others, keep pontificating that Aids can be treated easily by eating spinach and swallowing vitamins?

I sometimes wonder if Tshabalala-Msimang has ever witnessed the last days of an Aids-afflicted person's life - the agony, the helplessness, and the totally undignified ending?

The reality

This perhaps sums up what is happening on much of the African continent today - a situation that sees women bearing a dozen babies each, who are then left malnourished and exhibit the signs of kwashiokor. All this while the men go out on daily rounds of senseless butchery, and make even more babies - and even commit rape.

Now, because of South Africa's goody-goody disposition to accept all types, on the rather flimsy grounds that African states housed our people during the struggle, we are making what are essentially their problems ours - while we labour and groan under a million and half problems of our own. This is not right at all, even by the woolly thinking of the government's most ardent apologists.

And there is absolutely no reason why anybody should want to steal linen from the very needy patients unless there is something fundamentally wrong with our moral make-up as individuals and as a society.

And the typhoid outbreak means that, once more, we have been let down horribly by those we elected (and will elect again and again)!

Why are we being lied to at every turn, and why must we believe them?

Provincial health department spokesperson Popo Maja gave an assurance a few days ago that there were no cases of typhoid in Gauteng, but subsequent events have proved the untruthfulness of that assertion.

We never seem to learn, do we? Just a few days ago I heard an SABC report that water in this country has been rated among the top three samplings, and I switched off the TV; I do not need to be lied to any more, or to allow myself to be made a fool by the fatcats who rule us.

All this on the same day I heard reports that water in Benoni is no longer safe.

I guess there is total truth in the saying that you get the government you deserve - but this is ridiculous.

Jon Qwelane's column is published each week on News24, courtesy of Jon Qwelane and the editor of Sunday Sun, which originally carried the article.

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