#BraamSuicide: Cricketer says black families don’t grasp depression

A prominent domestic cricketer has weighed in on the debate over the Wits student who committed suicide at the weekend.

Omphile Ramela, a left-handed batsman for the Highveld Lions and South Africa ‘A’, didn’t want to get involved in the discourse over whether authorities did or didn’t do enough for the 19-year-old woman.

Also read: Wits student dies after jumping from building in suspected suicide

Instead, he chose to highlight how black South African families still struggle to deal with depression.

In a Twitter post, Ramela said these families aren’t “safe spaces”.

“Unfortunately black families aren’t safe spaces to express mental illness or depression,” he wrote.

The 29-year-old from Soweto went on to further explain his line of thinking by opining in another post that attitudes toward depression is misunderstood.

“Tragically mental illness = witchcraft/bewitched in black communities. How suffocating!”

Ramela, who’s currently in the process of completing a Master’s degree in Economics at the University of Stellenbosch, is known as a keen thinker on social issues.

Late last year, he was outspoken in a BBC documentary over the “false perception” that cricket in the townships is a “myth”.

Also read: Omphile Ramela: Fund our townships to affect transformation

Ramela was also alleged to have been the spokesperson of a group calling itself ‘Black Cricketers in Unity’, who in December 2015 wrote a letter to then Cricket South Africa chief Haroon Lorgat over the state of transformation in the sport.

Tributes have poured in on social media for the student.

Solani Sibanda, who apparently witnessed the incident, alleges that there were fellow students who encouraged her to jump because she “was an attention seeker”.

Wits’ SRC said in a statement that “unspoken pressures” were starting to take its toll on South African students.