Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Residence woe puts kidney patient at risk
City man trapped in bureaucratic nightmare
OPTIMISM in one form or another has been a defining quality of the nearly two dozen City Life features published over the past seven months, and it is poignantly true of this one, too.
Most of the people who live and work in the central city point to the dynamism and energy of a district succeeding in becoming safer, more accessible and liveable as the source of that optimism. Much of it wells from the bold thinking of the Central City Improvement District (CCID) and other agencies.
At street- level, the optimism is every day stimulated by seemingly humdrum activity – fixing broken pavements and potholes, tidying up tree wells, repairing bollards, clearing litter – which is the work of people who form the teams managed by the NGO, Straatwerk.
One of them is a cheerful, 33- year- old man whose optimistic outlook belies his fate; he was diagnosed a few months ago with chronic renal failure. For any other young and otherwise healthy man like him, this would have been a daunting, but not insurmountable condition.
In Obey Togarepi’s case, history, nationality and the cold complexity of regulation all conspire to place him at grave risk. And unless he can find help, this father of two young children will likely die before his prime.
Togarepi was born in Masvingo in south- eastern Zimbabwe in 1983, in the shadow of the notorious Gukurahundi atrocities across neighbouring Matabeleland.
After finishing his basic schooling in 2004, Togarepi left Masvingo for Botswana, hoping to raise money to continue studying. That didn’t work out and he returned home for a year. He left again, this time for South Africa. He lived for a few years in Polokwane – and succeeded initially in securing asylum status, but only until 2010.
He left Polokwane for Cape Town in 2008, though he struggled to find anywhere to live and ended up at the Napier Street Haven. He soon got himself on to a regular shift with Straatwerk, earning R40 an hour. A year later, he was signed up by the CCID for training in road maintenance and road marking, and, within two years, had become a foreman.
Last year, he was promoted to operations manager, happy to be investing his effort in a city in which he had found a home for himself and his wife, Ashell, and their two children, Bradwell and Bethanie.
By this time, his asylum status had lapsed, and he had secured a work permit. The future looked rosy – but not for long.
Having developed a cholesterol problem in 2013, Togarepi took himself off to a day clinic late last year for what he imagined would be a routine checkup. “The blood test showed there was something wrong, and I was transferred to Groote Schuur.”
When he emerged almost two weeks later, it was with the grim knowledge that his kidneys were failing.
But there was another problem. Had he been an asylum seeker, or officially a refugee, he would have been eligible for state care – weekly dialysis and a slot on the waiting list for a kidney transplant. But having a work permit turns out to be a penalty, as it means he is not entitled to public health care.
Togarepi earns in the region of R6 500 a month, but
town, you
feel that if the
Zanu-PF people
see you,
his dialysis treatment costs R10 000 a month – and it cannot continue indefinitely. He must have a costly transplant if he is to survive. On top of that, he must pay for the rental of his family accommodation, for food, transport and the care of his children.
His wife brings in some earnings but, between them, there is simply not enough.
What’s more, his twiceweekly four- and- a- half- hour dialysis sessions come at a cost in wages, as he has to take the time off.
Might he qualify, after all, for asylum status? He tried. But the legal requirement is onerous: proof of a “wellfounded fear of being persecuted” in the applicant’s home country is a burden that falls on the claimant.
The Cape Town Asylum Determination Centre of the Department of Home Affairs, after a hearing on December 8, concluded that “there has been a very good atmosphere” – that “in the light of the above country of origin information she (sic) won’t face a reasonable risk
something could
of persecution upon his return”.
Togarepi thinks differently. He did return to Zimbabwe in December. “I went straight to the hospital at Harare, not to Masvingo, as I realised I was dying and needed medical treatment. I was immediately hospitalised and had to pay for three dialysis treatments. I got in touch with my parents and they came to see me and after the meeting, I got on the bus and returned to South Africa.
“I did not feel 100 percent safe. In my home town, you feel that if the Zanu-PF people see you, something could happen.”
The double bind is this: if he qualified as an asylum seeker, Togarepi would lose his work permit.
For now, Togarepi is in the caring hands of Pat Eddy, the CCID’s social development manager.
An option might be to take up minimal medical aid cover – with full disclosure – and, after a year, seek an upgrade to comprehensive cover to match his medical requirements. But this would be very costly too, and in the meantime he would have to continue paying for his dialysis himself.
In the absence of an official change of heart – which the law doesn’t appear to allow for – Togarepi can only count on help from other quarters.
Eddy said: “Here is a young man who is contributing to the work of the CCID and the city. But if we don’t find some way of overcoming this... he is going to die.”
michael.morris@inl.co.za
‘In my home
happen’