Peter Dickson
Five of the most vulnerable people in the Eastern Cape have now died since the withdrawal by the Department of Welfare of their disability and care-dependence grants in line with the new government policy that ironically seeks the social and economic upliftment of the disabled.
The latest victim was an epileptic and mentally retarded teenager from Kei Road near King William’s Town, who spent most of his days confined to his bed and whose care-dependency grant was the single monetary lifeline for himself and his mother who permanently cared for him.
In a cruel twist of fate, it was his mother, the department told concerned King William’s Town Anglican priest Siyabulela Gidi, who had filled in the wrong pay-out point in a reapplication form after her son’s grant was stopped in November last year. But no one in the department told her. Instead, after 10 consequent months of hardship with little food and no medication, mentally and physically ill Nkululelko Mavata (18) died during an epileptic fit and was buried in Kei Road cemetery last week.
And only then was Gidi, who had stood by the family, finally told by the department that Mavata’s mother had filled in the reapplication form incorrectly after November’s final payment.
She had indicated she wanted to be paid in King William’s Town’s Ginsberg township, they said, and not Kei Road.
But Gidi says Mavata’s mother had asked for the grant to be paid out in Kei Road, not in Ginsberg, and had never been able to find out if the pay-out point had actually been moved elsewhere.
“We have subsequently established it was not paid out in Ginsberg either,” Gidi said, adding that the combination of bureaucratic incompetence and indifference that had contributed to Mavata’s death is “a terrible indictment against the system”.
Eastern Cape campaigner for the disabled Karin Claydon, following the documenting by the Mail & Guardian (August 27 to September 2) of the widespread tragedy brought about by the new policy in the province, says she has since been contacted by the Minister of Welfare and Population Development, Zola Skweyiya.
Skweyiya has invited her to discuss the crisis with him when he visits the Eastern Cape later this month.
Claydon has also contacted provincial MEC for Welfare, South African Communist Party politburo member Ncumisa Kondlo, to set up the meeting.
It is the first response by the government to Claydon’s year-long appeals that culminated in her chaining herself to East London’s Steve Biko memorial last month in public protest, along with Disabled People of South Africa co-ordinator Bernard Kwaaiman.
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