Reply to Daily Maverick: The DA, Life Esidimeni victims and media

I sent the following to Daily Maverick's deputy editor Janet Heard with the note it was not necessarily for publication understanding it would not be. While Daily Maverick theoretically invites letters to the editor and op-ed contributions from readers, as Heard did to me a few months ago on another matter after I also emailed them, I've found, except for my first and only one in 2016, they're very selective about what they publish and then usually only from people with titles and positions. The comments they discontinued at the end of 2017 with the unmet promise it would return was, therefore, the only way readers could comment on articles. Ironically, they receive funding from George Soros' Open Society Foundation for South Africa whose objective is transparency. As I told Heard in my covering email, it's unlikely they would publish it given that I criticise them, writer Marianne Merten, their "opinionista" Helen Zille and media.

I agree with Daily Maverick’s Marianne Merten it's tacky of the DA to use Life Esidimeni victims' names  on their billboard and under the specific wording (even if one agrees with the overall anti-ANC sentiment) "the ANC is killing us". In a similar theme, the mayor of a Canadian town where 47 people died in a rail explosion criticised Netflix for using the images in their series Bird Box.

In fact, I thought the same thing: did the DA get the families' permission even if the names are in the public domain? If I was family, I would object because the billboard is not victim-centred but intended for commercial, and even more crass, political marketing. Are they trying to channel Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri?  If so, like some of their strategies and tactics over recent years, they've lost the plot.

There's a serious, personal point I want to make about the DA vis-a-vis health governance issues. While they, and arguably Mmusi Maimane and Helen Zille who are the most sanctimonious, always take the high moral road, not surprisingly they’ve a blind spot about their own shortcomings, e.g. the serious water crisis where they blamed everyone, especially residents, except themselves and the De Lille matter where eventually no charges stuck and proved it was a vindictive campaign all along. 

In 2017 when Daily Maverick (DM) still had comments, before they discontinued them for specious, politically correct reasons (one of the main reasons I infrequently read it now), I challenged their "opininista" Helen Zille – the all-seeing, all-knowing "oracle" – over her glowing, disingenuous report of the Western Cape's public health service, particularly Groote Schuur Hospital (disclosure: my late mother was and I'm an out-patient there).

I commented to her article that I've personal experience of and heard alarming anecdotes about the hospital including where people died under questionable circumstances (Woodstock Police Station’s inquests investigator told me this too in September 2018 and in August 2017 Cape Town inquest magistrate told me the hospital keeps him the “busiest detective at the station”).

Publically contradicted, she invited me to submit details, apparently forgetting that for the prior four months I had been trying, with little to no success, to get the WC Health Department to investigate my mother's treatment and death at Groote Schuur in July 2017 (I had copied her and health MEC Nomafrench Mbombo who was silent throughout it all).

Zille personally replied to my email, pre-emptively defending the head of health department Dr Beth Engelbrecht and hospital CEO Dr Bhavna Patel, both of whom had obstructed, and in the end rejected (Engelbrecht) my persistent requests for an investigation after they promised to do so.  Soon after this exchange Zille too declined via her PA for spurious reasons despite all of them being obliged to do so under the National Health Act’s chapter section 18’s patients “may submit complaints and have them investigated by the healthcare provider”.

I emailed Maimane at his generic DA email address and federal executive chairman James Selfe about her and her administration’s conduct but they never replied.  At other times I made a comparison between how the ANC-run Gauteng and national government dealt with Esidimeni and the Western Cape and Zille dealt with my mom’s and other cases.

Incidentally, for a short while I notified the media including DM and Groundup, with evidence if necessary. For example, Groundup expressed interest about, generically speaking, the dysfunction of WCHD’s patient complaints system that Engelbrecht personally oversees (only she can refer complaints to the Independent Health Complaints Committee, which doesn’t make it “independent”, though, a significant problem). At their request I provided them current evidence from the source herself, Engelbrecht.

After wasting my time sending it, the editor replied they couldn’t run the story. But a few months later they ran a similar one about the WCHD not addressing patient complaints. When I posted a letter reminding them about the dysfunctional complaints system, they opaquely replied my comment was not relevant to them but the non-profit heading the patients’ campaign, Treatment Action Campaign (why run the story then)! To me it sounded suspiciously like a cover up. Groundup did not post the two letters. I’ve not read it again. 

I had similar dubious responses from other media or none at all. CapeTalk said it's not a story they could do. In mid-2018 Politicsweb rejected my article, after publishing many others of mine on other topics, about the compromised National Prosecutions Authority. It was allegedly because of one paragraph in an otherwise, according to the editor, excellent piece which mentioned our recent experience with the NPA that he implied was potentially defamatory although no names were mentioned, but people who knew the story could identify individuals. It wasn't defamatory – the statements were true – or problematic in terms of the Press Council's code of conduct. But Politicsweb published Andrew Donaldson's column wherein he called the EFF "orcs" which arguably is defamatory even if understood in a metaphorical sense. 

There are small human interest stories the media that claims to promote the public interest don’t bother with apparently because it’s either not topical, or as I suspect, they’re pursuing tendentious political agendas instead. I suspect Esidimeni may have started with a few individual cases the media ignored but hysterically and dishonestly went into overdrive when the extent of the tragedy became known, like Groundup ignoring a confirmed account of the WC’s dysfunctional complaints system, then a few months later posting an article about it but not wanting to credit that it was informed about similar months before. 

Assuming it had an inkling, what was the media’s role in ignoring Esidimeni at the time it happened?

In 2017 the editor of the Cape Times told me one shouldn’t use the media to fight personal battles. This was after, at his invitation, I submitted a part investigative, fact-based op-ed about the problematic planning approval system of the City of Cape Town that favours developers, their self-described “red-carpet approach”.

But for no apparent reason, literally overnight, he got frosty after being so enthusiastic. The only thing that could have changed was that in an email after I sent the draft I mentioned a locally well-known small business, not mentioned by name in the article, was implicated in my case study. Either that or the then mayco for development Brett Herron to whom he sent my piece for comment before publishing told him something about me that put him off (I don’t know what that might have been, though, as I had emailed evidence from the city to support my allegations about, in this case, “illegal” building work). I never read the group’s papers again.

This again proves the media are motivated by considerations beyond the story, certainly beyond the press code’s primary principle of freedom of speech and in the public interest.

The DA’s Jack Bloom of Gauteng’s legislature and other DA members frequently issue statements about health and other services in their provinces and how badly the ANC is failing the population. The ANC occasionally does the same about the DA in the Western Cape. Is the Western Cape’s public health service that much better than national? Not according to Health System Trust annual health review that shows the province’s public health service ranks third lowest at 52.8% after North West (50.1%) and Gauteng (51.8%) for the percentage of users of highly satisfied with the service (South African HealthReview 2016, 2014 figures, p297).

So why is the Western Cape’s system not more under the spotlight? In one of her DM columns Zille wrote they have measures to prevent a repeat of Esidimeni (only then, though?).  But like most of her opinions on governance and the allegedly wonderful things she’s doing for the province, in the context of the province’s at times problematic and politically manipulated health and complaints systems, and where there’s an on-record, furiously determined effort to avoid accountability, as she and Engelbrect did in my mother’s case, I find her claim dishonest and incredible.

I’m not objective about my mother’s case (and her supporters would say not about Zille too although unlike many of them my opinions are based on experience, evidence and informed opinion). But it’s a factual, if complicated, story in the public interest that illustrates the failure and abuse by officials of the patient complaints system, the impunity with which politicians, MECs, premiers, health and hospital officials and doctors operate, and the pressure and influence they have over the justice system. 

Why would DM and other media outlets not be interested in that, at least regarding known governance failures? There may be other reasons but I suspect one might be because in DM's case Zille is a valued op-ed contributor and it would be very awkward, and not permitted, for her administration’s failure to be revealed in another piece on the same site.

And now we have the DA hypocritically claiming the “ANC is killing us”. Well, they or the doctors who worked for them contributed to my mother’s death. It’s medically and legally correct her death was not natural and was brought by an agent – the doctor(s) withholding and withdrawing treatment and life support. This is not speculation. While unconscious they removed her life support breathing tube that they inserted not twelve hours before without informing us until two hours after she died or afterward telling us why its removal was necessary, a position they, including Zille, have maintained until today despite informed consent being a legal requirement under the health laws. It was de facto active euthanasia, by the way, that neither she nor we had previously considered or approved. 

I maintain it was as legally defined, assault, and culpable homicide. And DM published an article July 2018 about the hospital’s Trauma Centre that had a picture of one of the doctors, not including unit head Andrew Nicol (not involved in her care) who refused to give the family a report.

Not counting the media, in our own version of the film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, over the past fifteen months my family and I officially asked the hospital, Western Cape government, Zille, two police stations, Cape Town Director of Public Prosecutions, NPA, Health Professional Council of South Africa and copying the national health ombudsman and presidency what exactly happened. But we either received no answer or deafening silence.

In the process we laid two separate criminal charges that were dismissed for no reason we were told or can think of; an off, on, off, on, off DPP inquest that we’re now suspicious of and want no part of (Zille had direct access to the DPP and had irregular ex parte discussions about the case when we had difficulty obtaining information) and two complaints with the HPCSA.  All are dormant, stalled or dismissed, and there’s been no action from the HPCSA over a year after the complaints were laid.

The DA is hypocritical and has no right to invoke and appropriate the names of the Esidimeni dead in their campaign. On its own it’s questionable, but given their problematic record in the Western Cape and Cape Town, it’s downright disreputable. This proves again the once proud liberal party of Helen Suzman has lost all perspective, and given their sanctimony, is no better than the ANC they’re forever criticising and litigating against.

Last, Merten uses her article to fight her personal battles against the DA, in this case them sending her begging emails. We’ve all used the media thus, especially politicians which the media soak up.

But unless done with care and for an honest purpose, it may come across as personal and agenda-driven as is her complaint about the city’s water and electricity levies, which all residents must pay. In the case of a staff journalist as opposed to an op-ed contributor, using the media to air grievances is petty. I’m sure if she did her job as a reporter she could find many people, unlike her, working class people who find the charges and levies truly burdensome rather than an inconvenience.

That’s one of the major problems with the media today – good investigative journalism has been replaced by opinion. Anyway, what do the levies have to do with the DA appropriating Life Esidimeni victims?