Loose cannon:Robert Kirby
Charlene Smith’s was an extraordinarily brave description last week, of the twin ordeals she underwent – at the brutal hands of a rapist and then at the equally brutal hands of those to whom she turned for help. With the exception of one compassionate and determined policeman, the people who should have helped her, were of a subhuman strain.
Most of all, Charlene Smith’s article might have the effect of kicking many of us out of our apathy, our smug indifference to the horrors we only hear reported. It might just bring about some change in the thinking of the authorities.
Particularly disturbing in Smith’s article was how two private hospitals – Garden City Clinic and Milpark Hospital – callously refused to supply her with emergency drugs – on the grounds that they weren’t sure she’d able to pay for them. Had he suffered a scratch or two while committing his crime, one of these institutions would gladly have welcomed the admission to their wards of the rapist, himself. The costs of the criminal’s treatment in a private clinic are guaranteed by the state. When it comes to the victims of the same criminal, the same state doesn’t give a toss.
As Charlene Smith so clearly points out, premeditated violent rape is not just to do with sexual needs. It is one of the degenerate by-products of a distorted society. Her rapist was one of the rainbow’s many bastards – one born every 36 seconds. To ratify the needs of these degenerates as predominant to those of their victims is an act of the deepest political obscenity.
That there is a rash of money-mad private clinics and hospitals in South Africa is no secret. They flourish principally because South African public health services have fallen into such decay and maladministration, those who some way can afford to keep well away from them. The result is a secondary rash of opportunistic medical-aid schemes, tailored to underwrite vastly over-priced treatment in privately run medical institutions.
As Charlene Smith’s story reveals, in these private outfits the accepted humanities of medical compassion and concern are little more than bothersome anathema – things which might interrupt the smooth inward flow of cheques. The private clinics stand as monuments to the ruthless indifference of a more than usually avaricious faction of businessmen. A few hefty fines might tickle boardroom consciences.
And the longer the government allows this situation to continue, the worse it will become. The law is long overdue which makes it a severe criminal offence not to treat someone in desperate need regardless of whether they can pay or not.
Other things come out of Charlene Smith’s experience. One of these is the urgent need that HIV/Aids be declared a notifiable disease. The real reason the government won’t do this is obvious. With HIV/ Aids a notifiable disease the government would have to undertake full responsibility for treating it. Like TB it would become virtually their private domain. They would have to undertake extra responsibilities and costs they would far rather sidestep.
For instance, with HIV/Aids a notifiable disease there would no question of denying AZT drug therapy to pregnant mothers because with notifiable diseases the government takes full responsibility for containing them. Having the appropriate preventive drug treatment on hand for rape victims would be compulsory.
Instead of messing about with crappy Virodene projects, the government health department would have to make drugs like AZT freely available to everyone. As indeed they do with drugs to fight TB. What’s more, with a proper national register of HIV/Aids sufferers, a reliable statistical base could be compiled so that necessary future strategy could be planned.
But tackling the HIV/Aids problem properly is something Nkosazana Zuma will do everything in her power to avoid. You only have to look at her lamentable decision about AZT therapy for pregnant women to understand how pathetic is her ability to conduct her portfolio.
Instead, she and her cohorts misdirect. They advance the “right to privacy” argument as the most important reason for not declaring HIV/Aids notifiable, thereby camouflaging the real reasons for their decision to keep the disease as much in the dark as possible.
True, it would cost a mint to address the HIV-Aids crisis in proper terms. But then, as Mr Mbeki said recently, the greatest enemy in our midst is HIV/Aids. For a start why not redirect the defence department’s R29-billion towards fighting Aids, instead of using it to anoint the crude power- fantasies of Ronnie Kasrils et al?