After 350 years, the state still denies us a dignified death
Helping suffering people to end their lives remains a crime in South Africa. Now, backed by eight influential doctors, an ethicist goes to the high court with the aim of decriminalising euthanasia
Self-deliverance, suicide, call it what you will – does the state have authority over the life of an individual? We will soon find out in South Africa as Professor Willem Landman of the Ethics Institute of SA, who sits on the executive committee of Dignitysa, approaches the Pretoria High Court in June to seek clarity on current legislation.
The application hopes to have euthanasia – including assisted suicide – decriminalised and asks the court to instruct Parliament to draft legislation to cover it.
Landman says Dignitysa will ask the court to halt criminal prosecutions for euthanasia and assisted suicide until there is legal clarity on the matter.
Strengthening the case is the support of eight influential doctors who published their professional opinion in the SA Medical Journal in February.
Professor JP van Niekerk, Dr Paul Cluver, Dr Edwin Hertzog, Professor Mariana Kruger, Professor Keymanthri Moodley, Professor Jonny Myers, Professor Dan Ncayiyana and Dr Johan Snyman all offered full support for Dignitysa’s planned court action.
“People will always differ on whether euthanasia is ethically justifiable, especially on a religious level. The fact is, that is not the debate we are currently engaged in. We say that the existing Constitution of our country must be correctly interpreted on this matter,” they wrote.
“The Constitution is in place, even though people have ethical differences about it.”
Whose life is it anyway?
One of the first recorded deaths by suicide in South Africa was of a 24-year-old woman, known only as Zara, a servant who took her own life in Cape Town in December 1671.
She was found hanged in the sheep house of “free men” by Francois Champelaar (servant of Joris Jans) and Angela of Bengal (wife of Arnoldus Willems), who cut her down.
The Dutch East India Company colonial administrators at the Cape ordered that Zara be punished postmortem. Her body was dragged by a donkey along the streets towards Green Point and Gallows Hill, named after the gallows that once stood there. All her belongings and property were confiscated by the state.
Her corpse was strung up and hanged from a gibbet, a pole used to hang the already dead. This was as punishment, for all to see that Zara’s life was not hers to take.
Because she could speak at least three languages, including Dutch and Portuguese, and had attended church, she was considered “civilised”, according to records. As such, she owed her existence to the colonial government.
And it was those who considered themselves civilised who left Zara’s body out to hang for the predators to rip and peck at, and for all to see, to serve as a warning to others. Suicide was considered a “sin” by the Dutch occupiers.
Professor Premesh Lalu, founding director of the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape, has warned against speculating about the motive for Zara’s decision to take her own life. We should beware of creating a martyr, he said, or to view Zara as a symbol of a woman who would rather end her life than live under colonial rule. Too many secrets surround Zara’s decision, he reminds us.
Fair enough, but it remains tempting to view her action as an act of resistance and self-ownership.
The long road to dignity
Zara’s taking of her life and subsequent punishment happened more than 350 years ago, and yet here we are in 2024 still persecuting those who seek to end their lives.
In February, Carol de Swardt, a 63-year-old mother of two from George, ended her life in Switzerland. She had lost a leg after botched treatment for skin cancer at Grey’s Hospital in Pietermaritzburg and her body was being consumed by her illness.
Her children could not accompany her to the Pegasos clinic in Switzerland for fear that they could be criminally charged in South Africa for helping their mother to die.
That it was her wish, that she was sound of mind and that she had prepared herself spiritually were of no consequence to the law as it stands.
Netwerk24 filmed a short documentary as De Swardt flew out of South Africa to Switzerland, where Dignitysa’s Professor Sean Davison, who oversees the Exit Swiss Assistance Programme, accompanied her on her last journey. Titled Ek Wil Myself Nie Verloor Nie (I Don’t Want to Lose Myself ), the 24-minute documentary is hard but searing viewing.
De Swardt’s courage is remarkable.
The irony of contemporary opposition to self-deliverance in South Africa, mostly on religious grounds, is that the country practises passive euthanasia every day as people who do not have the money for expensive treatments are left to die.
A depleted medical aid and the inability to access the most basic of healthcare is a long-term sentence of death, sometimes a slow one, for many citizens.
While opponents of assisted dying have focused on those who choose to end their lives, they seem less interested in those who seek to live through medical assistance but are denied it.
It is time for Parliament to listen to the doctors and lawyers who seek to change laws in line with the Constitution. May it be sooner rather than later.
Her children could not accompany her to the Pegasos clinic in Switzerland for fear that they could be
criminally charged in South Africa for helping
their mother to die