Despair multiplies when we are silenced by secrecy
Alittle over a year ago, I attended lobola negotiations between two families in Thokoza. The talks were tense and difficult and went on all morning. It was a scorching day to boot, and we all perspired in the suits we wore for the occasion. Sweatstained handkerchiefs mopped damp brows. Eventually, after more than four hours, an amount was agreed upon and a celebratory lunch commenced.
Six months later, the bridegroom was dead. I found out by accident. I had only attended the negotiations because I happened to have an appointment that morning with the bridegroom’s uncle; he was roped into the talks at the last moment and so he brought me along. Now, when I mentioned the negotiations in passing, he told me that his nephew had died just the previous week.
I tried to find out what had happened. Families are reluctant to talk frankly about these things. I was told vague and confusing stories. He had kidney failure. He might have lived if a better doctor had been on duty at the hospital when he fell ill. Nobody was expecting it; it was so sudden.
Many months later, I found myself on a long road trip with the dead man’s aunt. Alone and with lots of time on our hands, she told me the truth. Five years earlier, he had been diagnosed with AIDS. He went straight onto antiretroviral treatment and was fine. Then he broke up with his girlfriend and a few months later started seeing another woman, the one who was meant to become his wife. He was afraid to tell her he had AIDS and when they started living together he stopped taking his pills.
When I heard this story, I felt devastated. A flat, sad feeling settled in and did not leave me for days. Peter Bruce wrote a powerful column in these pages some time ago about the terrible destruction mental illness wreaks. But this man was not mentally ill. He died simply because he didn’t talk to anyone, despite the fact that there were people in this world who loved him.
I have tried to place myself in his shoes. What made him believe that throwing away his pills was the solution to his dilemma? His thinking was so pitifully confused, so lacking in rudimentary rationality. We all become like that when we are desperate and alone.
The men who negotiated bride wealth on his behalf that morning in Thokoza cared deeply for him. He has left a mother who is bereft and confused. No doubt, his prospective wife loved him too. An hour’s conversation with any one of these people might have caused him to live another 50 years and perhaps also saved him from infecting the woman in his life. All of these people are living with the knowledge that they were in spitting distance of a man they might have saved. They are all lesser people for his death. They are wounded and sore, notwithstanding that life marches on.
I write this column now, this week, in the midst of heightened political drama, for a purpose. Politics has invaded public discourse in recent times and thrust everything else aside. I am not casting blame. It is more than understandable; it is inevitable. But it is so very important to widen our lens and see all of life, or at least as much of it as we can take. Each day people die because they were too afraid to talk to those around them. That is how fragile human life can be.
High politics aside, there is space in these pages to mark ordinary tragedies.
CONVERSATION WITH ANY ONE … MIGHT HAVE CAUSED HIM TO LIVE ANOTHER 50 YEARS AND PERHAPS ALSO SAVED HIM FROM INFECTING THE WOMAN IN HIS LIFE