SOWETAN | Stop the tragic cholera outbreak
Like any three-year-old, Tshimologo Semenya was playful, talkative and full of energy.
The tap outside his home in Kanana Extension, Hammanskraal, is his family’s only source of water. Drinking from it was only natural for him. He would not have known otherwise.
There were no warnings or public messages that reached his family pointing to a heightened problem.
A week ago his mother, Dimakatso Semenya, noticed his energy levels drop. The little boy began showing symptoms of what we now know to be cholera.
He was rushed to the Jubilee hospital where he was put on a drip and then waited for four hours in his mother’s arms for proper medical attention.
When nurses eventually attended to him, Tshimologo was limp and had begun to go cold. He is the youngest victim to die in what has been declared a cholera outbreak in Hammanskraal, Tshwane.
Today we tell their heart-wrenching stories. The devastation is indescribable.
Mothers, fathers, grandparents and children whose lives were ended by the callous actions of a government meant to serve them.
As the death toll rose to 15 yesterday, authorities lurched into crisis mode with public statements and briefings meant to display a sense of urgency in their intervention.
But they too know as well as we do that this calamity has been long in the making. As far back as 2008, this community has been consuming polluted water, according to the Human Rights Commission.
To this day there has been no meaningful intervention from politicians and their successive administrations to address this crisis.
Their efforts have been lacklustre at best and driven by a repulsive posture of political bickering. Like many tragedies in this country, this could have and should have been avoided.
It was not and dare we say because the victims are poor and vulnerable.
Their deaths are at the hands of politicians who betrayed their promise, officials who abandoned their duty and overall, a government that has failed in its constitutional obligation to protect life.