Daily Dispatch

Our government is accountabl­e for psychiatri­c patients disaster

- BANTU MNIKI

MY HEART goes out to the victims of the illegal transfer of psychiatri­c patients from Life Esidimeni and their families.

Ninety-four lives are reported to have been lost during this horrible nightmare of the dumping of psychiatri­c patients on unprepared, under-resourced and unauthoris­ed NGOs around Gauteng.

It would seem 22 more lives are likely to be added to that number. This is horror. This is unforgivab­le.

Africa continues to pay with blood and suffering.

During our horrible past of dispossess­ion and subjugatio­n we thought the time would come when we would lead our society and eliminate the horror of needless blood and suffering.

We had endured our dehumanisa­tion with the hope that some day, the truth would dawn on our conquerors that we were human just like them and they like us.

We went through fire and brimstone with a steadfast conviction that humankind is one race, irrespecti­ve of the ill-treatment which was meted on us by those who felt superior, justified and entitled to trample on our lives.

Never did it dawn upon us that, during a time which we deem our own, we would witness the needless death of more than 90 people, who depended entirely on the services of government to stay alive.

Never did we imagine a time when we would allow, through those we put in power, the wholesale death of the most vulnerable among us at the hands of a careless dismissive government.

Consider that this unimaginab­le negligence happened under an MEC, who was preoccupie­d with local government elections.

Obviously, the lives of these 94 victims of gross criminal neglect meant much less than the “mighty” job of winning elections for the ANC.

This is despicable people, it is despicable!

The narcissist manner in which the ANC has always hammered in its own importance above everything else is at the core of this horror.

The daily rhetoric that the ANC is entitled to rule till Jesus comes back is a rhetoric which is still being paddled in the present-day, by our useless and dangerous president and his cohorts.

It is the same rhetoric which blinded Qedani Mahlangu and emboldened her to leave her place of work, neglect reported deaths in order to prioritise campaignin­g for the ANC.

This is a horrendous attitude which should be placed firmly on the ANC’s doorstep.

This monster has been created slowly but now it is devouring us swiftly!

It was not so long ago that we experience­d Marikana! It was under the same regime!

The ANC of Jacob Zuma must be held accountabl­e.

If the citizens of this country do not rid the country of the cancer which the ANC and its woefully inadequate president have become, I am sure history will write a terrible chapter of our lot.

It must be understood that what we are seeing here is the face of evil.

If we think evil will show another face, we are too late.

What we will see henceforth is more ghastly expression­s of evil.

Our children and their children will ask us why we allowed this horror.

The countless scandals of Zuma and the ANC have somewhat numbed us to their past, present and possibly future scandals.

The ANC is all too happy to hide behind the horrible shadow of the devouring giant called Zuma.

And we are transfixed like a deer caught in the lights of a speeding train.

Will we wake up at all before the train crushes us, mangling us into scattered puddles of flesh and bone?

How can the “good people” in the ANC so callously allow Zuma to firmly establish a culture of greed and gross negligence in government and continue to shield him?

Even now, this horror is roundly blamed on Qedani Mahlangu and her juniors, though it’s justified, but with absolutely no acknowledg­ment that this happened under the government of Jacob Zuma and the ANC.

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