Esidimeni: MEC offered bereft mom food parcels
A MOTHER described how the former head of the Gauteng mental health review board, Dr Makgabo Manamela, forced her to hand over her son’s body for a post-mortem – the day before his funeral.
When she refused, Jabulile Hlatshwayo was informed by Manamela and acting director of forensic pathology Dr Richard Lebethe that her stepson Sizwe’s body was to be exhumed because of a police inquest.
Hlatshwayo said: “I didn’t want to give them my child, but my family discussed the matter. I told them it would be hard for me to bury him and then see him exhumed.”
She then gave consent, but said Sizwe’s body was not returned home by 4.30pm as per tradition. Instead, she received it only at 7pm.
Sizwe, who had an intellectual disability, died in September but the family were informed more than a month later. He was one of the 141 psychiatric patients who died during the Gauteng marathon project that saw patients moved from Life Esidimeni facilities to makeshift NGOs, as a cost-saving measure.
The Life Esidimeni alternative dispute resolution is sitting in Parktown to determine what compensation their families should receive.
Hlatshwayo said Manamela and former Gauteng health MEC Qedani Mahlangu offered to give her family food parcels. “I told them to shove the food where the sun doesn’t shine. All the trauma and pain I went through doesn’t equate to food parcels.
“Sizwe lived in Life Esidimeni for 16 years and it took government less than seven months to kill my son,” an angry Hlatshwayo said.
She said that when she last saw Sizwe at an NGO in Hammanskraal, she promised to fetch him and take him home. “He looked so thin and was unhappy. He didn’t even give me a hug like he usually did, he just looked down,” she said.
When she visited him again two weeks later, the centre was shut down. Hlatshwayo and her family searched for him for months. The next time she saw Sizwe was when she identified his body at a mortuary.
Hlatshwayo said Daphney Ndlovu, a social worker at Cullinan Care and Rehabilitation Centre (CCRC), said it took long to inform them because she didn’t have their contact details.
Sizwe was placed at CCRC before being transferred again to Anchor House, where he died.
Anna Mthembu related her horrific discovery when she went to identify her sister Busisiwe Shabalala at CCRC.
She said they found her body in a small room that didn’t resemble a mortuary. “She was on the floor just covered in a sheet. The room was not even cold,” she said.
Shabalala died from hyperthermia and severe dehydration.