‘They robbed my daughter of a future’ — how listeriosis shattered a mother’s dreams

“Tiger Brands is not compassionate. They don’t have any message towards anyone who has contracted listeriosis. They are just living their lives like nothing happened and we had to do everything on our own. The medical expenses are too much. The bills are way too much. The life that we are living now is not the life we wanted our kids to live. Everything is just a mess.”

These were the words of Monthla Ngobeni, who is one of more than 1,000 people who contracted listeriosis after consuming contaminated processed meat products from Enterprise Foods, a former subsidiary of Tiger Brands. Ngobeni was pregnant when she contracted the bacteria and passed it on to her baby, Theto, while she was still in her mother’s womb.

Between January 2017 and July 2018, South Africa experienced a progressive increase in listeriosis cases, 218 of which ended in fatalities. It was the world’s largest recorded outbreak.

Six years after the outbreak was traced to Tiger Brands’ now closed Enterprise food factory in Polokwane, Limpopo, the victims have yet to receive compensation for their suffering.

Read more: Tiger Brands on the hook as lawyers build case for listeriosis victims

A mother’s heartbreak

Sitting in her living room in Kwena Motolo in Polokwane, Ngobeni shared the heartbreaking story of Theto’s battle with the consequences of listeriosis.

“When I found out I was pregnant with Theto, obviously I was very happy. We planned to have Theto, we were expecting her,” she said.

Ngobeni, who had two other children, craved processed meats throughout her pregnancy with Theto. Because she lived close to the Tiger Brands cold-meat processing factory in Polokwane, she turned to Enterprise products to satisfy her cravings.

“I loved them to bits. I used to eat polony, viennas, Russians, ham, you name them. I craved them so much. I would eat them in the morning, and during the day, when I crave polony on its own, I would just cut a slice and eat it, not knowing it was contaminated,” said Ngobeni.

During her second trimester, Ngobeni fell ill and began to limp. Despite this, Ngobeni said the family was overjoyed when Theto was born on 22 December 2017.

The euphoria was short-lived, however. Only 18 days later, Theto was back in the hospital. Her head had swollen and scans showed that fluids had accumulated in her brain. She was diagnosed with hydrocephalus.

“That’s when the painful journey started. Until now, we are struggling with the pain that she encountered when she was 18 days old. Theto’s condition is life-threatening.

“When she is sick, you cannot just say, ‘I will go to the doctor some other time.’ You just have to prioritise her and take her to the hospital… Sometimes you go to sleep, and you wake up, and the head is swollen, and you must rush her to the hospital.”

Theto is now on the cusp of turning seven years old, and in her short life, she has endured six brain surgeries and lives with two ventriculoperitoneal shunts in her head to drain the fluid in her brain. She struggles with developmental delays and will probably not reach the same milestones as her peers.

At one year old, Theto had still not begun crawling and started talking only when she was three. She frequently forgets things she learned the previous day and struggles to control her bowel movements, which results in her having to be routinely pulled out of school.

“The pain of watching Theto struggle is unbearable. It’s so deep. We are not coping as a family,” Ngobeni said.

A smiling Theto told Daily Maverick she wanted to be a doctor when she grew up. “I wish I [can] be a doctor. I want to help people feel better, and I want to make sure they are good so they can stay home and eat medicine and water.”

“They [Tiger Brands] robbed her,” said her mother. “They robbed her of the life that she is supposed to be living — some of the games she’s not allowed to play because of her condition. Even at home, when playing with her siblings, they always mind her head because it is fragile.

“I cannot predict what the future holds for her, but I am just hoping for the best. I owe her an apology because I’m the one who ate this contaminated food, and this is the result of what I ate,” said a tearful Ngobeni.

Read more: ‘I wouldn’t wish for anyone to experience this’ — the listeriosis outbreak and a mother’s heartbreak

Cost of an outbreak

Theto and her mother’s medical costs have put a severe financial strain on the family. They had to sell their home and possessions and move from town to Kwena Moloto, a rural area on the outskirts of Polokwane.

Ngobeni had a bilateral hip replacement — the surgical replacement of both hips — and has to visit a doctor every six months and take medication daily.

On Sunday, Daily Maverick reported that the legal team behind the class action against Tiger Brands had received new evidence that definitively linked the listeriosis outbreak to the company.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Listeriosis tragedy ‘breakthrough’ evidence makes ‘overwhelming’ case Tiger Brands was responsible – lawyers

Richard Spoor Incorporated (RSI) Attorneys and LHL Attorneys said they had received confirmation that the sequence type 6 (ST6) strain predominantly responsible for the outbreak was found in Tiger Brands’ Enterprise facility in Polokwane and no other location.

The additional evidence has renewed hopes that Tiger Brands will be found liable for the outbreak and the victims will be compensated.

“As a [claimant] in the class action, I am hoping that everyone that has been affected is compensated accordingly, because some people lost their loved ones, some people lost their kids, and it is painful,” said Ngobeni.

‘Watertight case’

On Monday, RSI Attorneys held a press briefing to provide updates on the class action representing 1,000 claimants affected by the listeriosis outbreak.

Richard Spoor, the director of the public interest law firm, said the outbreak had disproportionately affected poor, working-class families who used polony as a cheap, widely available source of protein.

RSI Attorneys has been involved in many public interest cases over the years.

“This case, however, is distinguished by a lack of progress towards settlement. And that’s all the more remarkable because the case against the company responsible for all these deaths and all this suffering, Tiger Brands, is watertight,” said Spoor. “It’s perhaps the strongest case I’ve ever worked on.”

He said that despite strong scientific evidence linking the outbreak to Tiger Brands’ Enterprise Foods factory in Polokwane, “Tiger Brands has refused to take any responsibility for the harm it’s done.”

Read more: Life After Listeriosis: Photo Essay

RSI Attorneys noted that Tiger Brands’ insurers were handling the litigation. The insurers are Stalker Hutchison Admiral (SHA) Risk Specialists — owned by Santam — and QBE Insurance Group.

According to Spoor, it benefited the insurers to draw out the litigation.

“The money that they haven’t paid is sitting in the bank, attracting interest on a compounded basis. There’s … R2-billion that’s sitting in the bank in the reserves of the insurer or the reinsurer, and that’s accruing interest… Nominally, the claims don’t grow at all, there’s no interest accruing on the damages. So, from a financial point of view, it is advantageous to delay the penalty.”

Daily Maverick asked the insurers to comment on these claims. QBE Insurance Group responded that it would be inappropriate for it to comment on ongoing litigation against Tiger Brands.

Santam Insurance Limited said that SHA Risk Specialists was part of a panel of reinsurers on a larger insurance programme, including Tiger Brands.

“We are very sympathetic to the plight of the plaintiffs, and the attorneys appointed by the panel are in constant contact with the attorney representing the plaintiffs in order to obtain all the relevant supporting evidence and information for the panel to progress the matter further,” said Santam.

It referred Daily Maverick to Tiger Brands’ statement on the status of the listeriosis case, adding that it would be “inappropriate to respond to the question/s posed, in light of the ongoing litigation”.

Spoor said that while he couldn’t provide an exact value for each victim’s claim, the damages were estimated to be between R1.5-billion and R2.5-billion. He said Tiger Brands had all the information about the claimants’ medical conditions.

According to Spoor, 93% of the people who were identified as having listeriosis during the outbreak had the ST6 strain, which was found only at the Enterprise Foods factory in Polokwane.

“This is a class action, which means that we’re arguing that they’re responsible for every member of the class… It allows them room to argue that ‘We are responsible, but not for everyone.’ If they are genuinely admitting that they are responsible, we are open to negotiate a settlement of the individuals or cases that they believe they are responsible for, but they have not responded to that request to settle these cases,” said Thamsanqa Malusi, a senior attorney at RSI.

Tiger Brands previously told Daily Maverick that it was committed to ensuring a resolution of the listeriosis class action in the shortest possible time, in the interest of all parties, particularly the victims.

“Tiger Brands’ legal team and the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the class action continue to attend to pretrial preparations to get the matter ready for trial, where liability will be determined by the court. The court will allocate a trial date once all necessary pretrial procedures have been attended to and the matter is ready to proceed to trial,” it stated. DM