The tragic case of the deaths of 21 children at the Enyobeni Tavern, and last week’s response of the Eastern Cape health department to their parents’ pleas to release the postmortems and causes of death, takes many of us back to the horrors of the apartheid era cover-ups of atrocities committed against citizens by an unaccountable government.
Remember detainees slipping on pieces of soap in a shower and dying? Brain-damaged detainees “shamming brain damage, and then starving them to death”? Or murdered detainees being hung by their jeans and suicide notes being forged to cover up the brutal murders?
We are now at great risk of getting back there, if we are not already in that horror show again.
How can the Eastern Cape government believe it is appropriate to treat grieving parents of the 21 children who died in the Enyobeni Tavern in July, with such disrespect and insensitivity?
What is the Eastern Cape government hiding by not letting parents see the written postmortem results? What privacy protection arises when parents as guardians of mostly children under 18 years ask to see the details of the cause of their deaths?
This refusal to account to citizens reminds some of us who were on the receiving end of state security abuses during the struggle for freedom, of the refusal by the apartheid government to give our lawyers reasons why we were banned, detained or denied access to information.
Our lawyers’ letters would be responded to in simple terms: “It is not in the interest of the security of the state to give you reasons for actions taken against you.”
Here we are again, confronted by a government that does not regard parents’ rights to see the details of their children’s postmortems, as legitimate and appropriate.
How can the EC government expect poor parents to have the energy, time and resources to go through the bureaucratic process of applying to the promotion of access to information offices, to be granted their legitimate rights to the postmortem results of their own children? This accountability failure and insensitivity is adding salt to actively bleeding wounds.
Has the government lost all pretence of adherence to ubuntu values, and the empathy and sympathy that are at the heart of being human?
Visit Daily Maverick’s home page for more news, analysis and investigations
Where is the outrage of we, the people?
Have we become so accustomed to abuse of the human rights and dignity of poor people – urban or rural – that we have come to accept that this is how life in post-apartheid South Africa is lived?
What happened to the idealism that drove the struggle for freedom? Where is the spirit of solidarity with the least among us? Are we so desensitised to the inequities and inequality in our society that we are only focusing on what matters to our own interests?
Where are the keepers of our constitutional democracy in the face of this gross disrespect and insensitivity to the suffering of those who have lost loved ones?
Where were civil society organisations protecting and defending democracy when the same parents were denied access to the East London Magistrates’ Court on Friday to witness the appearance of the couple responsible for the deaths of their children?
Where are the voices for social justice? The voices of the SA Medical Association when poor people are being fobbed off with “protection of doctor-patient confidentiality”?
Is the medical profession forgetting the lessons of the cost of their silence in the face of Stephen Biko’s assault and the role of doctors in protecting the police rather than protecting a critically injured detainee?
What about Lawyers for Human Rights? The Legal Resources Centre? Academia? Where are these voices to stop this gross violation of parents’ rights?
Finally, citizens need to stand together against the liquor industry that is promoting and exploiting alcohol abuse to drive insane profits at the expense of the most vulnerable in our society. Our government, including President Ramaphosa, stands on the sidelines lamenting our society’s unhealthy relationship with alcohol.
What has our government done to regulate the industry properly to transform its “dop system” legacy and limit its ongoing tendencies to promote alcohol among the poorest communities, with sheebeens everywhere in urban and rural areas?
The Enyobeni Tavern deaths are a shameful monument to our failure to transform ours into a just society where the wellbeing of all is promoted. DM/MC
Become an Insider
“Have we become so accustomed to abuse of the human rights and dignity of poor people – urban or rural.” Sadly yes. Its the fault of the voters. Most vote for non accountability in every election. They are the at their own demise as well as the demise of those who don’t vote for the reprobates. Fortunately the more sensible minority are generally more resilient and make the most of a bad situation and still manage to succeed. A small blessing.
Thank you, Dr Ramphele. You ask all the right questions and your outrage is fully justified. There is the distinct stench of decomposing rodent in how the EC government is behaving.
Suspicions of a serious cover-up are difficult to avoid is one has regard to the concentric failures attending the killing of these minors: the tavern owner who broke the law on permitting access to underage minors; the failure of local authorities to enforce compliance with the rules; and the abetting, at the very least, by law enforcement who turned a blind eye to a long-standing habit of the tavern admitting minors.
It gets worse. After inadvertently revealing the presence of methanol in the blood of some of the deceased, a deadly toxin that should not be present, even in trace amounts, in a healthy person, before comically backtracking and instead offering to the aghast parents suffocation and crush injuries as the cause of death, after having categorically ruled it out, means the game is up. There’s no getting around this for the EC government.
And, if that is not enough, the scandalous haste with which the alcohol on the premises, probably the most important evidence, was removed immediately after the killing of the children, suggests that the alcohol was illicitly laced with methanol, used by unscrupulous pedlars to cut the cost of the alcohol. It is reasonable to wonder if local politicians and officials were on the take and are now trying to cover their exposed backsides. It won’t work.