The sick heart

Well, I wanted to find out about the beating heart of this country, and today I found it was on a life-support machine. Well, it would be if such high-tech equipment existed at the Isilimela Clinic at the end of a 17km dirt road, potholed and scarred by years of heavy rains and forgotten promises.

“It is cleaner than when I brought my father here,” commented Jimmy Selani, my translator, as we sat outside the wards, waiting to corner a doctor or a nurse. “We took my father home to die. You don’t come here to get better. If God permits you, you live, if not, you die. It’s not their problem. People are just here for the jobs, to get their salary at the end of the month. They don’t smile. If you are in hospital, you need encouragement, you need hope, you need to be encouraged to get better, but these people don’t care. They just want their money at the end of the month.”

We managed to corner a friendly Nigerian doctor who had been working at the clinic for a year. He helped me to speak to Nurse Cynthia Qikani who had been at the hospital since 1987. I asked how things had changed over the 15 years of democracy – had services at this hospital improved?

Her answer stopped my heart.
“Before 1994 everything was going good. We had doctors, nurses, equipment and services. In 1994 we thought the change was all for the good. We can’t blame the government, but we are blaming them. We are in a dilemma. As time goes on there is a constant decline.
We used to order medical equipment from a central medical store. Now we have to use tenders and the process is very slow. It is not easy to get equipment. It takes from six months to a year to get new equipment. It used to take one month. We are failing because the tenders are failing us. It is difficult for us to get basic equipment like blood pressure testing machines, urine sticks, blood sugar testing equipment. We have it now but the tenders are not able to meet our demand."

I asked her why the ANC is forgetting its people.
“I think they do try and improve services, but I think the government needs to evaluate now they way it is going because we are going nowhere.
We have five wards and two nurses, but the government says there is no money for nurses. We need more staff, more doctors, and we need we need people who are actually well-trained and competent in charge of the tenders.
If you were to draw a graph, it would go down, down, down, and just recently start to curve up. I don’t have hope yet. We have been more than ten years without nurses and we’ve been promised and promised a tarred road, but it is just talk.
In November 2009 we got a visit from the Department of Health and they said they are going to fix the road. We believe them, but to say is not to do.”

I leave with my heart on my knees. The Transkei is the birthplace of the ANC. Mandela’s home in Qunu is just over 120km from here. This is the homeland for the people who struggled to bring freedom, democracy, equality and prosperity to the majority of South Africans. So why have these people been forgotten? It is a disgrace on this nation that in 2010 there is no tarred road to this hospital and that the furrows in the dirt are so big outside the main gates that I even struggled to mount it in a high wheelbase bakkie.

“Thank you for coming, because that shows you care,” said Cynthia. “Maybe you can tell people what it is like and maybe one day things will change.”

This is one of the most beautiful regions in South Africa. The land is fertile. The climate fantastic. You know your neighbour. It seems obvious that the government would want to provide health services on par with the cities so that people don’t feel they have to flee to depressing squatter camps on the edges of Jo’burg and Cape Town chasing a better life.

The better life could be here. If the comrades wasn’t so busy buying fancy cars.