OMPHITLHETSE MOOKI
PRINCE Sibusiso Khanyi cannot walk, talk or even feed himself. At 11, he spends his days crawling around his parents’ house in Tsakane, Ekurhuleni, and has to rely on family members to relieve himself.
He is mentally handicapped – brain damaged at birth due to the apparent negligence of Pholosong hospital staff members.
The boy – who can cry only when experiencing toothache, points to his genitals when he needs to use the toilet, and watches from a distance as boys his age play soccer in the dusty streets of the Ekurhuleni township – is entangled in a web of bureaucratic red tape involving R9 million he is owed by the Gauteng premier.
Premier Nomvula Mokonyane has ignored a Johannesburg High Court order instructing her to pay R9m towards the medical costs and upkeep of the boy, whose parents sued her as she is the custodian of the Gauteng health department.
“They injured my child, now they don’t want to pay. The money won’t buy his life but it will certainly make things easier. I just want the best for Prince. They just don’t care because it is not their children having to live like this,” his mother Martha Khanyi said yesterday.
Khanyi was not home when a rickety taxi full of children from the Felicitas school for the mentally and physically handicapped pulled up outside her modest home yesterday afternoon.
But her two daughters, aged 15 and 17, rushed out to meet their brother, with one of them pushing Prince’s wheelchair.
They chat briefly with Prince’s schoolmates before carrying him onto the wheelchair and pushing him inside the house, where their grandmother was waiting. The boy was then taken to the living room, where he was helped to take off his uniform.
“He can’t do anything for himself. I had to potty-train him so that he can now point when he is pressed… Then we take him to the bathroom,” said Khanyi, who arrived about 10 minutes later from a friend’s place.
Looking at her son, who sat curled on his knees on a rug on the floor in the living room, Khanyi recalled the day she was told that her son was brain damaged.
“I couldn’t stop crying. It was just too difficult,” she said.
When she went into labour on December 3, 1999, Khanyi said Prince had been in a breech position, which means her son, who weighed 4kg at birth, should have been delivered by caesarean section. But hospital staff allegedly opted for a vaginal delivery.
“One of his legs popped out first. Two nurses then helped me on my feet and walked me to the labour ward… with the leg dangling. It was there that they pulled him out, and when his head got stuck, they used a steel hook to pull it out,” she said.
Judge Nigel Willis ruled in Khanyi’s favour and found that hospital staff had failed to perform a caesarean “when it was evident that Prince was in distress, causing (him) to become asphyxiated due to a prolonged birth process. As as a result, Prince was asphyxiated at birth and suffered permanent brain injury.”
Judge Willis ordered Mokonyane to pay. Her lawyers applied for leave to appeal, which was granted. When the appeal period lapsed, her lawyers had not filed papers, prompting Khanyi’s lawyer to obtain a warrant of execution that would see 270 computers and desks, furniture, printers, copiers, fax machines, 10 small fridges and microwaves and filing cabinets being attached.
If no payment is made within the next 30 days, the sheriff will sell the items in execution of the debt in line with section 3(8) of the State Liability Amendment Act 14 of 2011. Until then, the family will have to make do with a single salary from Prince’s father and the disability grant the boy receives.
“We have to hire transport because there are no schools for the disabled here,” Khanyi said.
Matlakala Motloung, from the premier’s office, and health spokesman Simon Zwane issued a joint statement in which they said they had applied for condonation to file late papers, a process that could see them taking the matter to the Supreme Court of Appeal.
“The department filed notice to appeal and, however, due to lack of records, the department could not file heads of arguments on time. It was only when the sheriff approached the department with a writ did it come to light that the appeal has lapsed,” they said.