Batho pele (putting people first); motho kemotho kabatho (a human being is a human being because of others); ubuntu … admirable words, fine concepts, but meaningless in a society apparently devoid of capacity, compassion or concern.
I found that out the night Raymond Tucker, my husband of 33 years, failed to arrive at his destination. I continue to find out as I battle to gather the resources I need to put his life to rest and continue my own.
Where do you start to search for a missing person? Metro Traffic would seem to be a sensible option? Think again. I was assured that there had been no accident involving the car I was looking for. As we spoke, the crash, involving my husband’s car and a taxi, was holding up traffic at a major intersection in Sandton, as it had been for some time. It took a report on a commercial radio station to alert my son to the possible whereabouts of his father.
For him, the nightmare continued when he went to the mortuary the next day to identify the body and was kept hanging around for more than an hour because the official in charge couldn’t be bothered to attend to him.
Official indifference further manifested itself when Metro Police spokesperson Superintendent Wayne Minnaar hastened to inform the press that my husband had “lost control” of his car and caused the accident.
Five months later I finally held the scribbled police report that made it clear that “motor vehicle B” — the taxi — “turned to right from Grayston to Katherine Street [sic] without looking on-coming traffic [sic] and collided with vehicle A” — my husband’s car — “which was travelling along Grayston Drive Sandton”. Another victim of the lawlessness on the roads had been killed by another irresponsible taxi driver.
But does anybody care? Oh come on! Attempts to get any information at all from the Bramley police station were met with ignorance, arrogance and a blank refusal to cooperate. A call to the station commander elicited only rudeness and a repeated obdurate statement that I could fax her telling her what I wanted to know and, if she agreed to pass on any documents, I would have to pay for them (amount unstated). We received no response to the fax we sent, formally requesting information on the progress of the investigations.
So it was that early in February I went there, having arranged to meet the inspector “in charge” of the matter. He wasn’t in his office, he was “at a parade” and nobody was going to tell him I was waiting. During my half-hour pacing the grubby corridor I was ignored by the three women in the “Attorney Enquiries/motor vehicle accident office” who showed no rudiments of either concern or good manners. When, eventually, the inspector arrived, it was to tell me that he couldn’t give me the documents, I had to get them from the very office outside which I had been hanging about.
Apart from the autopsy report, the “report” I was finally given was all but illegible, badly photocopied and entirely inadequate. There were no statements from witnesses, despite the fact that the taxi had been full of them, and no sketch of the scene. There was no mention of a third vehicle, the owner of which had already had his insurance company send us a letter of demand.
Death sets off a chain reaction which begins with the freezing of all the deceased’s bank accounts. It does not, though, result in the freezing of office rental bills, salaries, rates and utilities, telephone accounts or grocery bills. On the contrary, it breeds further expenses — hospital bills, medical bills, funeral costs…
So, when the office of the Master of the Supreme Court takes more than two months from the date of application to issue simple letters of executorship, nothing can be done to unfreeze the bank accounts to pay the bills. When the letters did arrive, three of four names had been incorrectly entered.
When the police refuse to give a report, not only will the vehicle insurance company not pay out, the life insurance companies find an accident a useful excuse for holding on to your money. They continue to demand their premiums, though.
So, what are survivors to do who are not fortunate enough to have a cushion to fall back on, who were totally dependent on their breadwinner for support? Mortgage the house (if there is one)? Stand on a street corner holding a piece of cardboard? Pawn their possessions?
How many people have the energy, the know-how or the means to fight a callous and careless bureaucracy, to beat against the walls of indifference of institutions only too willing to take money but reluctant to dispense it, while battling grief, anguish and the catastrophic practical implications of sudden death? I could not, would not, have done it alone. I am lucky to know people who know people, people who could help me fight those battles, to get beyond the call centres and the blank-voiced clerks with their refusal to think out of the boxes on their myriad forms.
I continue to fight because I am a bloody-minded former journalist and an old-fashioned citizen who believes the people whose salary I am paying should do their job. I fight because if people who have the capacity to do so don’t try to hold the responsible people to account, what hope is there for the hundreds of victims of similar indifference, who simply do not have the resources or the energy to take on the system?
I do it because I want to know exactly how it was that my husband came to die on that Thursday night and to refute the allegations (published in two newspapers and widely doing the rounds) of some form of carelessness or weakness on his part that led to his death and that of the taxi driver.
I can do it because I am privileged and have access to telephones and faxes and transport and time.
In a final attempt to bring the investigation to a conclusion, I returned to Bramley police station later in February, this time accompanied by a member of the community safety department’s staff and thus able to access the superintendent who had declined for five months to respond to any of my son’s telephone messages. Many promises were made that day to inform us of the progress of “the investigation”. None of them has been honoured. As I write, it is nine weeks since that meeting and nothing more has been heard.
There should, eventually, be an inquest. Will we be told when it is? Will we ever learn the result? That is anybody’s guess.
Batho pele? Forget it!