Sam Mkokeli
My parents perished while others pilfered
Icannot hide my conflict and my anger. Both my parents died in December last year due to Covid. The image of my mother’s body at the morgue haunts me every single day. It inspires me too, as though to send a message: Carry on, my son.
I carry on, lifted by her trademark resilience and her “turn the other cheek, my son” philosophy, which was deeply rooted in her faith and upbringing in apartheid SA. Her parents named her Nomonde, and Patience. Patience means the same as Nomonde. Apparently the message had to be reinforced by calling her the same thing twice.
We spoke two days before she died when she called from a hospital in the Eastern Cape, where she was in high care. She was in good spirits and wanted to know how I was doing. She also asked about my father, who had tested positive and was isolated at home with me. She was getting better, the doctor said. She needed to speak less, so we minimised phone calls.
I messaged my siblings that she had just called, and we celebrated. We lived in hope. I later served my father a salad and chicken. He would eat and drop the disposable plates in a makeshift rubbish bin on the other side of the door. I would quickly grab and dispose of them, but this time I paused to tell him the good news, leaning against the door frame and projecting my voice through the mask. “Your wife called.”
“Yes, she called me too, and we had a good chat,” he responded.
Two days later, a call from my sister wakes me up. It’s around 5am. “She’s gone.”
I felt the snapping of the umbilical cord. I would never see the warmth in her eyes again. Never get that sweet motherly embrace. I imagine the heat a baby receives from suckling and pressing against the mother’s breast. My mother is gone and suddenly I am feeling cold in the middle of summer.
I have an arduous task. I have to tell my dad that the family’s anchor is gone. The most harrowing moment in my life is looking him in the eye and telling him that his wife of 48 years is gone.
I could see the tears welling, but they were too stubborn to trickle down.
“It’s OK,” he says. He utters a one-word sentence, in response to a church minister I had called to join us: “Ndiyayamkela.” (I accept the reality of my wife’s passing.)
“It’s a pandemic just like the plague of 1918,” he says. The Bible has many examples of plagues, he adds. He has been punched in the stomach and winded, I feel, as I try to emotionally detach myself, preparing to deal with the work ahead.
His eyes are still holding onto the tears. I can see my hero is stumped. Somehow he controls himself. We are sitting outside the house, spaced apart as he is still in isolation. We talk about the plague, religion, God and pandemics.
My mother waited a week in high care. She needed to be moved to an intensive care unit. No ICU beds were available in any of the hospitals nearby, private or public.
There was one in a government hospital in Mdantsane, 25km away. It was too risky to move her because she was unstable, doctors said. She was seventh on the waiting list for an ICU bed and age was not on her side.
Doctors and nurses are playing God, deciding that the younger patients deserve life more. That is life.
The availability of ICU beds is a big part of the story about our response to the pandemic. SA had 3,200 when the first case of Covid was confirmed.
We went into a draconian level 5 lockdown in March last year. The plan was to buy time, limit its spread while the public health infrastructure was being prepared.
A month later, I inquire while serving as a government spin doctor: how many beds now? About 3,300, I am told. OK, a whole level 5 lockdown later and only 100 more beds? This is tough and inefficient.
I watch with anguish as opinion-makers and journalists opine about our leaders’ supposedly great response to Covid.
Zweli Mkhize, the health minister, is hailed as a hero. Not so fast, I feel, although my tongue is tied by the fact that I am a government spokesperson volunteering in the Covid communications setup. I was a volunteer because the ministry of public enterprises where I worked at the time was not drawn into the “Covid command structures”.
In my interactions with colleagues, as we looked at the lay of the land, I let it out: “The media is praising Zweli but will turn on him the moment our public health infrastructure crumbles.”
The politicians nod with keen interest at my theory. Indeed, our infrastructure did crumble.
There were stories in the media about patients fighting over oxygen pipes but these were not linked to the health budget of more than R200bn and the missed opportunity to invest in our health infrastructure. They were just uncontextualised reports about the struggle for oxygen.
My father’s condition took a turn for the worse days after my mother was buried and he eventually died due to multiple organ failure. I take it on the chin. There is no time to cry. We are in a pandemic. If it did not happen to me, to whom should it happen? The Covid statistics have a face.
About 1.6-million people had died across the world at that time. My parents are among that number.
In SA, 56,000 people have died as of this week. Some of those lives could have been saved.
We needed to roll out a vaccination programme far more quickly. It would take a Zondo commission to get to the bottom of our government’s failure to obtain vaccines much earlier.
Is it incompetence? Is it corruption? Our health minister, his family and the department he leads are embroiled in a scandal about a communications tender.
I know some of the people involved reasonably well. I watch with a sense of disbelief as the minister fails to take ownership of the mess. The players have been alongside him all his political life. I cannot explain the sense of betrayal I feel.
It’s painful that the blessing of the nature of our collective, glorious history of triumph over apartheid is itself a curse. Liberation parties are inefficient administrators, almost by design, and are brutally corrupt.
We are just another African post-liberation society, never mind our grandiose wishes and convictions about South African exceptionalism. Thank you to the thieves for reminding us that you could steal oxygen from those who need it most. Shame on you.
I watch with a sense of disbelief as the minister fails to take ownership of the mess … I cannot explain the sense of betrayal I feel
We went into a draconian level 5 lockdown in March last year. The plan was to buy time … A whole level 5 lockdown later and only 100 more beds?