Grin Reapers — a smile and an NHI promise for Helen Joseph patients

I read somewhere that Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi and health MEC Nomantu Double-Barrelled rushed off to speak to Tom London, the “former broadcaster and current content producer” (to quote this very publication) after a video he made inside Helen Joseph Hospital went viral. He certainly produced that content!

London’s video showed the conditions “pertaining at” Helen Joseph while he was there to have a lung infection treated. His treatment was so inadequate that he signed a refusal of treatment form and discharged himself. Then, like anyone with a lot of content to produce, he put his video out there and, while it went viral, raised R100,000 or so and checked himself into a private hospital.

In case you haven’t had this story and/or viral video pass before your eyes yet, London noted what was lacking in the general Helen Joseph environment, besides the doctors who were more concerned about their cars and holidays than exercising a compassionate bedside manner.

The place wasn’t very clean, toilet paper was in short supply, patients waited a long time for attention, doctors treated patients like “cockroaches”, and so forth. Oh, and a guy in the bed diagonally opposite London’s died, but the corpse was left lying on the bed for hours as flies flew in and buzzed about it before those very flies buzzed over to London’s bedside and clustered on his glass of water. Surely the hospital has a few dripping taps or stagnant pools they could drink from?

That will have to be for the committee that has been convened by Mr Premier Lesufi and Ms MEC Double-Barrelled to look into the treatment received by Mr London, as well as, presumably, the conditions generally pertaining at (they will surely use these words) Helen Joseph.

Still, you’ve got to try to imagine their conversation with Mr London, the chat that led to this earth-shattering (or do I mean groundbreaking?) commitment to a committee to investigate stuff everybody else knows about already.

London goes over his hospital experience again, as he has now done several times, adding “as you will have seen in the video” at a few points, and Lesufi and Double-­Barrelled make sympathetic noises.

“Absolutely shocking,” says Mr Premier Lesufi. “I’m utterly gobsmacked! I knew absolutely nothing about this, and I have spies everywhere! How can it be that more than 30 years since our Glorious Revolution™ people are still suffering like this in our hospitals? It’s worse than apartheid!

“Or it would be worse than apartheid if the apartheid regime had actually built more hospitals for the poorest of the poor! Not that we, the ANC, really built more hos­pitals, but apartheid apartheid something something and the ANC will never be defeated! I blame the DA!”

In a softly cooling tone, Ms MEC Double-Barrelled is going: “Awful, awful... If only we’d known! We had no idea such conditions pertained at [yes!] Helen Joseph! It is surely the exception to the rule, because under our rule we have made a firm and un­yielding commitment to providing the best possible healthcare to all our people, and by ‘all our people’ I mean even the white people who are so scared of losing their medical aid under the new National Health Insurance devised by the brilliant intellectuals and ideologues of our Glorious Revolution™!”

She may then have gone on to explain that, in the words of the health minister, any opposition to the NHI was driven by those traitorous members of the GNU, the DA, and that such opposition was to deploy the tactics of swart gevaar. After all, it is very important to the health minister, and to the developmental state, sorry, the GNU in general, that there be a perfect alignment between the national, provincial and local government authorities on all policy priorities.

I’m sure London was reassured by that, though he may have pointed out that he has no medical aid anyway so he wouldn’t be suffering from the swart gevaar threat that it will be taken away from him and he’d have to go and suffer in a public hospital like the bulk of the populace. Too late! He’s already suffered. It’s like a foretaste of the NHI.

At any rate, you have to wonder why Mr Premier Lesufi and Ms MEC Double-Barrelled rushed to Mr London’s bedside. They didn’t rush to talk to the gogo who’d spent seven hours lying on the floor waiting to be treated for a broken hip, because of course she didn’t have a video to go viral.

They didn’t consult with the guy who had a knife stuck in his eye, but had to sit patiently in the emergency section while the doctor on duty went off to see if there was a claw hammer lying about to help get it out…

Okay, that last bit is slightly fictional. Who knows where that doctor went? It paints the scene, though. And who imagines that Lesufi and Double-Barrelled have ever set foot in Helen Joseph? Or Charlotte Maxeke? Or Rahima Moosa? Or, in fact, any of the hospitals named after heroes of the struggle, whose names they continue, 30 years later, to besmirch?

Health is presumably a provincial competency, if “competency” is the word I’m looking for, because Joburg’s new mayor, Dada Morero, didn’t join the rush to London’s bedside. He must have washed his hands of the whole thing. Well, washed his hands metaphorically – there’s probably no water to do it literally. Besides, Mr Mayor Morero has already told the denizens of World Class African City™ Johannesburg not to expect much from him during his short tenure until the next local government elections. He won’t be fixing no hospitals, no. He won’t be washing his hands in real water, no.

This is because he is very busy undoing the terrible mess caused by the previous DA administration, which in a few months entirely destroyed the city of Joburg – until then, of course, it was flourishing and beautiful and there was no rubbish in the streets.

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Oh, and he has to make sure that any info obtained by the committee to ensure clean government, which the ANC shut down, is safely hidden away.

No, Lesufi and Double-Barrelled will have to sort this one out. They will have to double down on their fantastically innovative plan to improve healthcare in Gauteng: the “I Serve with a Smile” campaign directed at health workers who were giving local government a bad name by not smiling when, for instance, they told a bleeding patient she’d have to wait a little longer because the hospital had no sutures, but here’s an aspirin in the meantime.

Really, truly, there’s an “I Serve with a Smile” campaign on. This is not a joke. Mr Premier Lesufi does not joke. But he does smile, as per the posters, when telling Mr London it will all be sorted out (short of giving him R100,000 to pay his private hospital bill), and he smiles when he says, don’t worry, we now know – thanks to your viral video! – that our hospitals are a disaster, but the NHI will sort it all out... In fact, we’ll send you back to a public hospital to conclude your treatment.

Don’t you worry, Mr London! Look, look – I’m smiling, aren’t I? DM

Shaun de Waal is a writer and editor.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.