Misery of a life without hope

No plan to help province’s mentally ill

THERE is no help in sight for East London’s mentally-ill homeless people, a week-long Daily Dispatch investigation has found.

Most mentally ill people have nowhere to go so they just walk the city’s streets each day. One man walks along the beach front talking to himself, while another directs traffic on Mdantsane Access Road during peak hour.

All wear ragged, filthy clothing, call the streets home and sleep in its bushes and even in litter-strewn gutters.

Health spokesman Sizwe Kupelo said his department, together with social development, had tried to intervene by launching Operation Cola-Cola (a pick-up campaign) in 2005.

As part of the campaign, homeless people from across the Eastern Cape were taken into care, with those displaying signs of mental illness treated after 72 hours of observation at state health facilities.

“This campaign was influenced by the fact that mentally disturbed people were a danger to the public. Some were attacking people on the streets, blocking traffic, with others were pretending to be traffic officers,” Kupelo said.

The campaign, however, came to an end after just six months when then-health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang ordered it to stop, apparently due to negative media reports which claimed the health department was forcefully taking homeless people to psychiatric institutions against their will.

Kupelo said there had not been another campaign of this nature since then. And with no city-designated homeless shelter or psychiatric institutions to house them, many are doomed to wander the streets for the rest of their lives.

Buffalo City Metro spokesman Thandy Matebese said the metro had no programmes aimed at assisting the homeless, leaving that to registered non-government organisations (NGOs) and social development. But social development spokesman Gcobani Maswana said his department catered only to abused women and children, the elderly or orphans.

Michelle Kerr, chairwoman of Wings Shelter, a non-profit organisation (NPO) which feeds the city’s homeless, estimated that there were around 100 homeless people in East London.

She said around one third of those live with a mental illness.

“I’m not a doctor so I can’t provide proper diagnoses but we can usually identify those who are mentally disturbed. They usually talk to themselves and carry themselves differently.”

Kerr said there was no point in calling paramedics or police to take in an individual. Police spokeswoman Warrant Officer Hazel Mqala said police could only arrest mentally-ill people if they broke the law. “If someone is just standing there then we can’t take them in,” she said.

“We can arrest someone for loitering, but we have to release them a few hours later and, if they are mentally ill, chances are they will go back to the same spot.”

With just 50 beds available at Cecilia Makiwane Hospital, Kupelo said they could only admit mental patients who displayed signs of violence against themselves or others. “Relatives or members of the public can still bring someone in from the street … for assessment but if they are not admitted they will receive some treatment and be discharged,” he said.

Earlier this year, the Dispatch reported on the murder of eight homeless people on East London streets, with a mentally ill homeless man taken in as a suspect.

Kupelo called for Operation Cola-Cola to be revived, and pointed to an assault in Mthatha by a mentally ill person that resulted in the victim’s death.

● More reports: Page 5