R1.2m won’t bring Esidimeni loved ones back

The Gauteng health department was slapped with a nearly R200 million rebuke when it was yesterday ordered to pay the families in the Life Esidimeni arbitration R1 million each for constitutional damages, among other awards. But the total bill could possibly reach well over R2 billion.

About 140 families were represented in the arbitration, but 1 800 patients, many of whose families had yet to come forward at the start of the arbitration, were affected by government’s termination of its contract with the facility.

Former deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke also ordered that government pay funeral costs amounting to R20 000 each to those whose loved ones had died, and R180 000 each for shock and trauma.

Families who were not part of the arbitration, but came forward as claimants afterwards, must also be paid, Moseneke said. He advised government not to initiate further litigation channels, but pay the families according to his awards.

Government had to pay these amounts within the next three months.

DA Gauteng MPL Jack Bloom said it was shameful that government only wanted to pay R200 000 each.

“Moseneke is holding the provincial government liable not just for common law damages – all they wanted to pay was R200 000 – and they had budgeted a mere R28 million for that. Now they are going to have to pay at least R175 million because he has forced them to pay R1 million to all the complainants for constitutional damages,” Bloom said.

But for the families who have spent the past two years with the trauma of family members being unceremoniously yanked from proper mental healthcare to certain death, justice would not be done until health officials were sent to prison.

Ntomnifuthi Dhladhla, 54, whose brother died seven months before she found his body at a hospital in Mamelodi, said she would not rest until former health MEC Qedani Mahlangu was called to task.

Describing the state in which she found her brother in an unsanitary government mortuary, she said all she could use to identify him was his missing legs, which were amputated while she still lived with him.

“We didn’t have the capacity to look after my brother. He would run away and was a grown man. We could not tie him down. So I thought I could trust government to look after him and I had him admitted,” Dhladhla said. “Now I regret that because I didn’t know that by taking him out of the streets, I was condemning him to an even worse fate.”

Dhladhla said she found Mahlangu’s attitude during her testimony reprehensible – particularly her claim that she could not have known that the transfer project carried the risk of death as she was ‘not a prophet’.

Premier David Makhura wanted those implicated to face the law.

“Certainly those who out of this arbitration process and the investigations that the police NPA and SIU are carrying out.

“There are officials who must face criminal charges and that’s why it’s not enough for people to say somebody else said I must do it. What does the law say? They must face the music.”

– simnikiweh@citizen.co.za 

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