A tragedy that must not be repeated

HOW much do you value your life? How much should we value another person’s? These aren’t existential questions, but the real conundrum Dikgang Moseneke has to grapple with.

The deputy chief justice emeritus is sitting in Parktown, Joburg, where he is chairing the hearing into a tragedy that shocked our country – the Life Esidimeni debacle which cost the lives of 143 psychiatric patients.

A group comprising families of 63 of the dead, represented by lobby group Section 27, has agreed on a figure of R200 000 in common law damages: R20 000 for funeral costs and the balance for emotional shock and trauma.

Justice Moseneke still has to decide on the actual award of damages.

S27 advocate Adila Hassim argued the constitutional damages should be R1.5 million each, because this is what the state would have had to pay had the Gauteng Department of Health not moved them to the NGOs that were neither equipped nor registered to look after them. Others have argued for awards rising to R3.5m.

The government will pay out of money needed for other services – out of money raised through taxation, from us.

Whatever amount is decided on, the necessary framework must be put in place to ensure that never again will anyone face such a fate at the hands of a government department.

Unless those who were culpable and complicit in this tragedy are brought to book and punished as individuals, not only will they escape sanction, but this type of callous behaviour may well continue.

For the Esidimeni victims not to have died in vain – and for the protection of other patients in the state health system – the guilty must be punished.