/ 23 September 2005

Rage flares over typhoid ‘spin’

Police had warned us not to go into Botleng and about 200m away we could see fires smouldering in the rock-strewn main road. In what we thought was a safe spot, we stopped opposite the school to check with a contact for directions.

The next moment, three youths were at the sidewindow demanding to know what we wanted. In a flash we were surrounded by hostile faces. Enraged residents started banging on the car, shouting ”Vula!” (open up). They wanted to know if we were police.

Repeating: ”We are press, we are press …” I drove off slowly. When I found my contact, he told us to get out of the township immediately as the situation was very dangerous. We were lucky — the convoy of Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon and a South African Press Association vehicle were stoned.

Earlier in the day the police fired rubber bullets into a crowd of 7 000 protesters after a petrol bomb was thrown at the municipal offices. Last week hundreds of residents also took to the streets.

Visitors like us may have caught flak, but the violence in the typhoid-hit Delmas township was directed against the authorities, in an eerie echo of the anti-apartheid upsurge of the late 1980s.

It was partly spawned by the month-long duration of the outbreak and mounting infections — 561 by Thursday morning, according to official figures, with four deaths. Another 3 000 people in Delmas have been diagnosed with diarrhoea.

But residents’ rage also centred on the uncomfortable fact that this was the second typhoid outbreak in 12 years. Suspicions were widespread that the epidemic and the fatality rate were more serious than the government was letting on.

At the weekend, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) said 49 had died. It also claimed that the epidemic had begun in June, not August 22, as in the official version.

The government has been trucking water into Botleng and protesters complained that the supply was inadequate and people were scrambling for what was available.

There is also anger over health officials who have been urging residents to wash their hands. Residents insisted that government failure, rather than poor personal hygiene, was the cause.

Some residents still use the bucket sewage system. Others rely on long-drop toilets, which carry the risk of contaminating ground water

Botleng resident Sarah Mogapi, believes her two nieces, Sizakele Nkabinde (29) and Nhlanhla Nkabinde (25), died of typhoid fever. They were not included in the official figures.

”I don’t believe that only 49 people have died,” she told the Mail & Guardian. ”Last Saturday there were nearly 30 cortÃ