All things being equal, a situation should not exist where we have to question our food producers’ commitment to ensuring the food we trust them to make and sell is not potentially harmful to us. And where it is discovered that it is, an immediate mea culpa and offer to remedy, one would assume, would be offered.
But alas, the world we live in is one in which a food industry giant is comfortable with the deadly infection of more than 1,000 people with listeriosis and the deaths of more than 200.
We live in a world where legal action and public campaigns for justice must be mounted before defeat, not conscience, rules the day and forces compensation for the loss of life, livelihood and dignity.
How heartless and immoral must one be to go to bed at night comfortably, knowing that children have lost a parent who was a pillar and guide in their lives? Who will never again show their love and help their children to become well-adjusted adults?
This is the case with the five Zwane siblings, whose mother died after eating contaminated cold meat. It forced Sibongile, the oldest of the siblings, to step into the role of mother to her younger siblings to fill the gaping void while still grieving her loss.
That there is a six-year-old child with severe developmental complications and pain as a result of fluid building up in her brain, causing it to swell, should give those who continue to evade accountability sleepless nights.
This young girl, Thetho Ngobeni, whose mom contracted the disease when she was pregnant, had a healthy future and a chance at a full life stolen from her. We cannot look the other way at this injustice.
All this while her mother, Montlha, also battles the effects of the disease on her that have culminated in her having a bilateral hip replacement and racking up unmanageable medical bills.
Excited expectant mother Amelia Victor was joyfully preparing to welcome her first child into the world when she contracted the disease. It infected her baby in utero. The complications of this led to her delivering her baby prematurely. The infant’s lungs began collapsing and, as a result of not getting enough oxygen to her brain, she died within two days, leaving behind a distraught mother, herself still battling the disease.
Now take the horror of just these three cases and multiply it by a thousand: the tragedy is immeasurable and the injustice unquantifiable. This is symptomatic of an uncaring system of food producers whose allegiance is not to the wellbeing of the people who consume their food but to profits for their shareholders.
Evidence of this is in the fact that, six years later, the victims of the listeriosis outbreak are still battling to be duly compensated. Despite overwhelming evidence of guilt lying at its doorstep, Tiger Brands, the company at the centre of the issue, insists on letting the matter drag out in court instead of acknowledging wrongdoing, asking the families for forgiveness and settling.
Sadly, the trauma that families will have to endure over and over again remains a menacing possibility in their pursuit of dignity and justice in an unjust world. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
You may write a letter to the DM168 editor at heather@dailymaverick.co.za sharing your views on this story. Letters will be curated, edited and considered for publication in our weekly newspaper on our readers’ views page.
