Scotch Tagwireyi
After five years of struggling to feed and educate her three children, Gertrude Mahlangu (34) of Katlehong on the East Rand decided to give up the fight. On January 17, when she realised she had failed to raise enough money to send her children to school, she decided to end her life and that of her two children, Duduzile (16) and Gugulethu (8).
Mahlangu bought a litre of Coca-Cola and mixed it with organic phosphate before sharing it with her children.
Her 12-year-old daughter, Notsikhelelo, who had slept at a relative’s house, might have averted the tragedy. When Notsikhelelo arrived home in the morning she found her mother and two sisters in a coma. She called neighbours for help, and the three were rushed to Natalspruit hospital. Mahlangu is currently at Natalspruit hospital in the intensive care unit and the two children are also still in hospital.
Mahlangu is not the first young woman, nor will she be the last, to try to kill herself and her children. Sister Baile Nyathi of the casualty department at Natalspruit hospital sees at least 10 people every week who have attempted to kill themselves.
“Our main problem now in the casualty department is suicide. There is a shocking increase in suicide cases in the township,” says Nyathi.
In Thokoza township, Gladys and Thabo Xaba and are still visiting a social worker for help together with their daughter Maria (15) after she tried to kill herself.
Maria drank bleach after an argument with her father over a school uniform. Maria had demanded that her father buy her a new uniform and a school bag for the new year. And when the father said he could not afford it because he was not working she attempted suicide.
A social worker at the University of the Witwatersrand, Dovhanai Mathiswana, says: “The increase in suicide cases is a result of people continuously becoming economically powerless. They continuously lose their means of survival and they tend to resort to suicide.”
According to Monica Mokgawa, a social worker at Natalspruit hospital, people use all sorts of things bleach, paraffin, battery acid, organic phosphate, brake fluid, crushed glass and firearms to end their lives and sometimes those of other members of their family.
Mokgawa says in the cases she has dealt with there are many reasons why people commit suicide, but the main cause is poverty. “The inability to provide for the family because one cannot get a job is the biggest problem. This is very frustrating for a social worker who is there to provide counselling, as opposed to material benefits such as a job or money.
“All I do is counselling, trying to deal with the emotional aspect, working on modification of their behaviour, and to give support,” Mokgawa said.
According to Mokgawa, many desperate people come to the hospital seeking disability status so that they can apply for disability grants. Many of these applications are rejected.
“Such people would eventually break down and decide to kill themselves,” Mokgawa explained. “Children also try to kill themselves because their parents cannot provide them with what they want.”
Mokgawa attributes poor relationships between parents and children as the main cause of many teenage suicides.
The other emerging reason behind the escalation of suicides is HIV/Aids diagnosis.” Many people cannot take the fact that they are HIV-positive, and they resort to killing themselves,” she says.
The names used in the story have been changed to protect the identities of the people involved