The entrance to Kairos house for traumatized people just outside Cullinan, 23 August 2021. Picture: Jacques Nelles
The Pretoria psychiatric patient who committed suicide at Cullinan’s Kairos House was not only heavily depressed and pleading to see to see a doctor before her death, she also allegedly did not have her medication for more than two weeks.
Days before she hanged herself, Cornel, 45, begged her mom, Isabella Grobler, to get her out of the centre as she could not sleep.
According to her mother, Cornel, who was at the centre for a year, was not taken to Weskoppies psychiatric hospital in Pretoria West for her regular appointments for over a month, and she simply could not take it anymore. What her family also did not know was that this was Cornel Grobler’s third attempt to take her own life that week alone.
“She was very depressed and asked me to get her sleeping pills as she could not sleep. I promised to come fetch her the following day but I was too late,” Grobler told The Citizen.
The 69-year-old Grobler said she was notified via text that Cornel, described as deeply caring and outgoing, was no more. Grobler said her frantic attempts to call the number went unanswered for at least another gruelling hour.
“It was only when my sister ultimately got hold of the director that we were told she hung herself. The message just said ‘Cornel is dead’ and nothing else,” she said.
Grobler said it was only then that she was told how her daughter had been suicidal that week. They told her how, on the day she died, said she was not hungry and left the dining area, only to later be found “hanging with an electric chord on the rafters of a workers room”.
According to a worker at the centre where five patients have apparently died in just two months, that previous Sunday Cornel had tried hanging herself in the ladies bathroom but the rope had snapped.
“Why was she not taken to Weskoppies on the Monday morning? Then she tried to cut her wrists on Wednesday. On Thursday she went to one of the workers Wendy houses and hung herself,” the worker said.
Kairos House has been rocked by claims of patients being neglected, starved, being deprived of medication, and not being monitored for compliance in taking their medication.
On 7 August 2021, two patients were allegedly chased away from Kairos.
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One of the patients, Petrus Smith, was run over by a car and found dead at a hospital the following and the other, known as Dirk Zulu-boy) was returned to the centre by police.
Just a day before, workers said two other patients whose names were shared with The Citizen, tried to commit suicide and were still recovering in hospital.
In June Shane Jordaan, 30, a patient at the centre housing about 120 patients, went missing and was found dead by the Cullinan road (R513) a month later.
The Kairos insider, also concerned about the wellbeing of patients, detailed how on the day Jordan’s body was found, a patient identified as Gordon “ate about 5 plates of food and at about 5pm he dropped dead”
Bronwynn Engelbrecht, the DA’s provincial spokesperson on Social Development, was this week refused permission to conduct an oversight visit to the home run from a private plot in Elandshoek, outside Cullinan.
She said the fact that Susan van Niekerk, Kairos House for Traumatised People manager, refused her entry raised serious questions.
“We have all these allegations swirling, people are dying and they are funded by public money. What are they hiding?” she asked.
Van Niekerk refused to speak to The Citizen and burst into tears as she explained to Engelbrecht, from behind the gate, how difficult it was to care for mentally ill patients.
The provincial department of health is yet to provide details of the arrangements between government and the NGO in terms of caring for these patients, how much the department spends per patient, and how the organisation is being held accountable for what happens behind its doors.
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