/ 12 October 2001

Pushed to the limits

A chance meeting on a dark highway has changed the life of a disabled man forever, Fred Esbend reports

Otto Xelo’s disability grant was cancelled by the Eastern Cape Department of Welfare. But the nearest office where the wheelchair-ridden man could reapply for one was in Port Elizabeth 70km away from his home in Jeffreys Bay.

So Xelo (35) asked teenager Mawethu Tooi to push him to Port Elizabeth, a journey they made four times without success a total of 560km.

Last Tuesday Port Elizabeth Technikon lecturer Jaap Nel was driving down the N2 highway between Port Elizabeth and Jeffreys Bay when he spotted the wheelchair. Nel did what many would regard as irresponsible in view of the high crime rate. He stopped and waited for the wheelchair to catch up with him.

The disabled man in the wheelchair and the lean, hungry teenager pushing him were about to creep into the hearts of the close-knit community of Blue Horizon Bay where Nel lives.

Nel heard their heartbreaking story on the side of the road. He was told how the two traversed the distance in the run-down wheelchair with its punctured wheel in the hope of collecting Xelo’s R570 disability grant.

Each time they made the trip, which sometimes took a day and a night’s walk depending on Mawethu’s dwindling strength, they would get to their destination to find there was no money.

“I was born disabled and am originally from Uitenhage. Although my mother is dead I still have a father who lives with his sister at Soweto-on-Sea in Port Elizabeth,” Xelo said.

“I did not enjoy living with them because there was too much drinking and fighting. A friend of mine from Jeffreys Bay also did not like my living conditions and invited me to stay with him.

“The only problem I now have is getting my disability grant. Earlier in the year I was hospitalised and as a result was unable to collect my grant. When I went to collect it I was told that it had been forfeited and that I would have to reapply.

“Because I planned moving to Jeffreys Bay, I asked a friend to help me have my disability grant reinstated. I left my identity book with him.

“In the first two months at Jeffreys Bay I contacted my friend several times to check if he received my money but each time he said ‘no’.

“I then decided to go myself to Port Elizabeth. But because I had no money for taxi fares I asked my cousin, Mawethu, to take me there by foot.

“The journey by foot would take us the whole day and well into the night.”

Nel heard this story and then offered to give the two a lift as far as the Blue Horizon Bay offramp. When they got there he realised he could not leave them in the dark.

After questioning them further he was struck by their remarkable story and decided to take them home with him where they were bathed, fed and given a place to sleep for two nights.

During the time Xelo and Tooi spent at Nel’s home, residents rallied to support them. Nel’s neighbours, Paul and Annemarie Heynike, donated their daughter’s almost-new wheelchair to Xelo while other neighbours gave donations totalling R200.

Nel said when Xelo was given the new wheelchair the disabled man folded his hands and began praying.

In an attempt to help Xelo, Nel approached the Kabega Park police station where a voluntary worker, Lynne Smitsdorff, tried to assist.

Arrangements were made for the police to go with Xelo to his friend’s home to retrieve his identity book and to establish whether any grant was received over the past few months.

A group of police officers arranged for a private vehicle to take Xelo back to Soweto-on-Sea instead of driving him in the back of a police van.

Said Smitsdorff: “The gentleman who had Xelo’s identity book turned out to be an alleged loanshark who said Xelo owed him money.Unfortunately the police officers were unable to do anything but open a case of theft.”

A representative at the Department of Welfare’s social security services was unable to confirm, without having Xelo’s ID number, whether payouts had been made in his name in the past few months. He said Xelo’s name did not appear on their computers.

Smitsdorff has advised Xelo to apply for another identity book and reapply for a disability grant.

Until then the Nels, their neighbours and the police will ensure he has enough to live on.