Landmark case: In South Africa, ALL pregnant women, women who are lactating, children under age six are entitled to free health services at any public health establishment. ALL. Period.

April 22, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Section 27 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa states, “Everyone has the right to have access to health care services, including reproductive health care.” Section 28 of that same Constitution states, “Every child has the right to basic nutrition, shelter, basic health care services and social services.” This week, the High Court of South Africa, Gauteng division, confirmed those sections, in no uncertain terms, in a landmark decision brought by the law and advocacy organization, Section27, and three women: Kamba Azama and Nomagugu Ndlovu, denied free health services while pregnant, and Sinanzeni Sibanda, whose child under six was denied free health services. While the judgement is a decided victory, many question why it had to come to this in the first place.

In 2020, the Gauteng Department of Health issued the Policy Implementation Guidelines on Patient Administration and Revenue Management, which was written and interpreted to allow Gauteng public hospitals to deny free services to pregnant women, lactating women, and children under six. Hospitals began charging exorbitant fees up front before offering any services. They believed provincial policy superseded the national Constitution; effectively, they believed the Constitution was, at best, an interesting document. Section27, Kamba Azama, Nomagugu Ndlovu, and Sinanzeni Sibanda said NO! to that policy and notion, and took the Health Department to court.

Over the last three years, reports of such abuse have increased. For example, “Julian” and his wife and child moved from Maratane Refugee Camp, in Mozambique, to South Africa, seeking, among other things, health care for the infant daughter, who lives with cerebral palsy. As an undocumented resident, “Julian” found only impediments: demands for identity documents, demands to pay upfront as a private patient. Today, he and his family struggle with the R40,000 debt that was imposed on him. Suffer little children …

“Grace Jean”, an asylum seeker from the Democratic Republic of Congo was eight months pregnant and suffered from high blood pressure. After consulting a clinic, she was referred to Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital. She went twice to the hospital. Each time, she was told to pay R20 000 to obtain a hospital file number and be treated. Unemployed, Grace and her husband could not come up with the money. She lost the baby.

“Fezal Blue”, an asylum seeker living with HIV, was in labor. She approached three hospitals. None would take her, because she couldn’t provide South African identity card and wasn’t carrying her asylum seeker permit. “Fezal Blue” gave birth in the back of a car, going to a fourth hospital. Mother and child survived, and the baby did receive nevirapine, preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

In his decision, Deputy Judge President Roland Sutherland declared Gauteng’s policy to be inoperative and generally an incoherent mess, not to mention a violation of the Constitution. Additionally, he gave all health establishments, across South Africa, until July 17th to post in a clearly visible place, the following: “ALL pregnant women,

ALL women who are lactating, and

ALL children below the age of six

Are entitled to free health services at any public health establishment, irrespective of their nationality and documentation status.”

ALL is capitalized in the Judge’s orders.

The Gauteng policy targeted the most vulnerable: asylum seekers, undocumented persons and persons who are at risk of statelessness. It did more than declare them persona non grata, it declared them nonpersons, unworthy of rights, dignity, or simple human decency. As Mbali Baduza, legal researcher at Section27, explained, “The effect of this court order is that it applies across the country… Medical xenophobia or health xenophobia has been on the rise in certain provinces, and this court order makes it clear that all pregnant women and children under six — regardless of their status — can access hospital care for free… and that’s an important precedent”.

Sharon Ekambaram, head of the Refugee and Migrant Rights Programme at Lawyers for Human Rights and a spokesperson for Kopanang Africa Against Xenophobia, Kaax, noted, “It is concerning that our government needs to be reminded of their constitutional obligations as set out in our Constitution and in our policies. This situation is but one component of a much broader crisis of institutionalised xenophobia”. Dale McKinley, also of Kaax, added, “We should be angry that we’ve had to go this far and that we have to continue to force our government to do the most basic things in terms of what our law says”.

Medical or health xenophobia is nationwide, across South Africa, as it is worldwide, and it’s spreading. Celebrate the victories, such as this landmark decision; and be concerned and angry. Part of the decision was to enforce the rule of law and the power and responsibility of the Constitution, and aprt of the decision was to emphasize the map. No assault on persons’ dignity is unique or individual, they are always part of a pattern of viral growth, and so every response must also be expansive. What happens in Gauteng does not stay in Gauteng.

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: Jana Hattingh / Spotlight) (Image Credit: Section27)

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Where are the women? In Ireland, and beyond, incarcerated and sleeping on the floor

April 16, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Dóchas Centre

Perhaps April is indeed the cruelest month, but when it comes to prison overcrowding, abuse, and general disregard for human dignity or life, it’s just another month. Take Ireland, for example. Reports started circulating at the beginning of the month that Irish prisons were dangerously overcrowded. On April 10, The Irish Times reported, “Fourfold increase in prisoners sleeping on floor as officials warn of safety risks in Mountjoy”.  Since the beginning of the year, the number of prisoners sleeping on the floor has increased by 400% … in a mere three months. The pandemic must be over, and this must be what `return to normal looks like’. The epicenter of this increase is Mountjoy Prison, which is at 110% capacity. In response, prison administrators are planning to buy bunk beds. That should take care of the problem, right? No. People sleeping on the floor presents a safety hazard to both incarcerated people and staff, according to an internal memo. But here’s the thing. This article is 20 short paragraphs long. It isn’t until the seventeenth and eighteenth paragraphs that the reader learns who exactly is being endangered: “Overcrowding is worse in the Dóchas Centre women’s prison which, with 172 prisoners, is operating at 118 per cent capacity. Limerick men’s prison, which was recently expanded, is at 130 per cent capacity (274 prisoners) while Limerick women’s prison is at 175 per cent (49 prisoners).” Where are the women? Sleeping on the floor and reduced to the margins of their own stories.

As of the most recent prison census, on April 13, Dóchas Centre, the women’s section of Mountjoy, remains at 118%. The Limerick women’s section is currently at 179%. Bunk beds won’t fix that, and everyone knows as much. Building more jails won’t address the situation either.

Chaplains who service Ireland’s prison release regular reports. The most recent one for Dóchas Centre, in 2020, reported, “Most recently a prisoner was remanded to the Dóchas Centre after having spent over a year in a psychiatric facility. The prisoner was clearly unwell and confused to the extent that after a few days in custody the prisoner wanted to know what hospital she was in. From as soon as she arrived in the Dóchas Centre the prisoner remained in bed all day. Prison was obviously not the place for that prisoner, yet the prisoner had been charged, arraigned in Court and remanded to prison. After considerable intervention by the Governor and Health Care Staff, the prisoner was removed back to the psychiatric facility that she had come from …. While Staff were dealing with this prisoner two other prisoners on the same landing were even more difficult to deal with: both were self-harming and both were violent. Both of the prisoners had been treated for mental illness before coming to prison. One of the prisoners had been brought to the Dochas Centre infected with Covid 19. The other prisoner was returned to the psychiatric facility where she had been a patient. That prisoner however was returned to the Dochas after she behaved in the same violent way that she had behaved in when she was being held in the Dochas previously. Obviously she had been referred to the psychiatric facility for specialist treatment. How was she expected to receive that treatment when she was returned to the Dochas? This is a clear example of the Dochas being used as a dumping ground.”

 “The Prison Service is too well aware of how prisons are constantly being used as the dumping ground for other agencies’ problems. Offenders whose offence is rooted in mental illness invariably get sent to prison because the State cannot accommodate them elsewhere. This imposes a duty of care on the Governor and his Staff which the normal exercise of their duty was not designed for. Prison Officers are not trained to handle psychiatric cases …. Covid has preoccupied all our thinking for almost a year. Hospitals filled to capacity are part of everyday discussion. At this time of terrible fear and anxiety in the community, no one is going to be surprised to hear that the Central Mental Hospital has no bed space available either. The difference however is that the CMH had no available space before the Covid 19 pandemic. Most prisons have prisoners suffering from mental illness who have been waiting for a bed in the CMH for over a year.” According to the Chaplain’s Report, the situation is “soul destroying. No one seems to care.”

The Chaplain concludes, “Government could find the resources to rescue the collapse of the banking system. Government could find the resources to pay workers to stay at home during the pandemic. Government could find the resources to protect the vulnerable from a life of addiction, homelessness and petty crime. Government instead sends the weakest and most vulnerable in society to prison at the cost of the taxpayer and the fabric of society.”

What has happened in the intervening three years? Women are no longer dumped into beds. Now, they’re dumped on the floor. Further, women have been even more deeply erased from the public record. They’re there, somewhere near the end of the rare account, as an afterthought. Where are the women? Dumped on the floor, dumped from their own stories. The Prison Service is too well aware …

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: Irish Examiner)

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Tennessee: Walking in Nashville and the Illusion of Decorum

April 8, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Tennessee: Walking in Nashville and the Illusion of Decorum

Justin Jones, Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson
Where will you be in 3 years 5 months And 2 days of this life?

Save us from the illusion of decorum
And the tired fear filled old men
Who want to take us back to the thrilling days of yesteryear
When we were all “Crimson and Clover” and “Chantilly Lace” and “Hi ho Silver, away”

When dance proctors at sock hops separated the dancers
By putting rulers between the boys who wore blue and girls who wore pink
And women weren’t supposed to have orgasms, either

Where post sex Coca-Cola douching supposedly prevented pregnancy
And they didn’t know that there were more than just two sexes
Or, that the world was about to dramatically change for everyone

Go walking in Nashville
In a time before Al Green had screamed
Either like his lover had just deeply satisfied him
Or, had just thrown hot grits on him in a bathtub

Before he was reverend Green who was glad to meet you when you didn’t have a prayer

Well, do we have a prayer in Nashville?

I saw the ghost of Jim Crow walk on MLK Blvd.
Walk up to the gates of the state house where he was greeted with regard
Now security definitely saw him
A walking corpse exhumed
That ugly zombie being
That Killed Martin Luther King
When America wouldn’t make room

Now I’m marching in Nashville

Forget history then repeat it ; amnesia is a little death

And be careful Obama babies because your struggles are just beginning

If you weren’t there; then you don’t remember;
And if you don’t remember; then, this is new to you.

Pay attention.

I’ll take you to another time,
A different name but the same place
The place is Charlotte Avenue
That MLk’s name has replaced

50 years after his death but only 5 years ago
And now America wants to Arrest its Development.
Old tired fearful men afraid of being replaced like street signs

And who don’t realize that the world is about to dramatically change for everyone.

(By Heidi Lindemann and Michael Perry)

(Image Credit: Kehinde Wiley, Mary, Comforter of the Afflicted II, 2016 / Art Basel)

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A Western Australia prisoner transport van forced Anna to endure hours in urine-soaked clothes. Why? Because she’s Aboriginal.

April 6, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: first as tragedy, then as farce.

                                                            Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

According to a report, “The transport of regional and remote prisoners”, released Monday, April 3, by the Office of the Inspector of Custodial Services of Western Australia, history repeated itself recently. The report describes “Anna’s journey”, a “transport welfare fail”. It then notes that the exact same failure happened to another incarcerated woman … two weeks earlier. The report opens, “This review was prompted by a few recent incidents that raised questions for us about the conditions under which prisoners were being transported across regional Western Australia. It was also undertaken against a historical backdrop of the tragic case of Mr Ward who died during a prisoner transport in 2008. We set out to seek assurance that the gains made since 2008 have been sustained.” The report ends, “There is a clear gap in the monitoring of … movement services at regional locations, which should be addressed by the Department. This aligns with the findings of the Coroner following the death of Mr Ward, and a recommendation for the Department to conduct regular reviews of transport contractor services in regional locations (Hope, 2009).” What does it mean that a failure in 2022, reported in 2023, “aligns” with findings and recommendations, issued in 2009, concerning an incident in 2008?

In 2022, Anna entered Greenough Regional Prison, for the third time. The staff at Greenough knew Anna. Flagged as living with schizophrenia, Anna was known to have an extensive psychiatric history, including frequent episodes of self-harm and suicidal behavior. This time, in her first week or so, Anna was reported twice for uncooperative and erratic behavior. She stopped taking her medications. Despite her non-compliant and erratic behavior, it was decided to move Anna to Bandyup Women’s Prison. The pre-transfer report described Anna as “satisfactory – no major concerns”. When staff tried to place Anna on a plane headed for Bandyup, Anna urinated on herself in the transport vehicle and refused to wear a mask. The trip was cancelled. As Anna was being returned to Greenough, staff issued a new plan, with no mention of schizophrenia or any other issues. The new plan was to transport Anna by van the 400 some kilometers to Bandyup.

A week later, Anna was bundled, shackled and handcuffed, into the security pod of an escort van, and off they went. The journey was 4 hours and 35 minutes. During that trip, early on, Anna, still handcuffed and shackled, urinated. There was no CCTV footage or cell phone call recordings. There was no documentation of anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps that’s because there was nothing out of the ordinary. Two hours in wet clothes, shackled and handcuffed in a so-called security pod. All in a day’s work … if the person is an Aboriginal woman.

Anna’s story ends in redundancy: “Prior to Anna’s transfer, another female prisoner departed Greenough in early April 2022 and urinated in the vehicle. Upon arrival to Bandyup, staff were made aware that this prisoner had urinated in the pod during the journey. Many of the issues we identified with Anna’s experience were also present in this earlier case …. It is concerning, and disappointing, that staff failed to learn from this earlier incident and implement measures, such as bringing a change of clothes or a towel, that would have helped protect the dignity and welfare of Anna during her journey a few weeks later.”

It is concerning and disappointing, and altogether predictable. Staff did not fail to learn, they did not even have to refuse to learn, because there has been no reason to. Throughout the report, the Inspector invokes the tragic case of Mr. Ward, who died in a prisoner transport in Western Australia. In January 2008, Mr. Ward, 46 years old, a respected elder, was taken on a 220 mile ride across the blistering Central Desert to face a drunk driving charge. Mr. Ward had represented the Ngaanyatjarra lands across Australia and at international fora. The people who drove Mr. Ward threw him into the back of a Mazda van, into the security “pod” with metal seating and no air conditioning. All male remand prisoners are considered dangerous, or “high risk”. That Mr. Ward was known to be cooperative and congenial was irrelevant. For his own safety and welfare, he had to go in the back. The trip took almost four hours. The temperatures that day were 40 degrees Celsius, 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Mr. Ward died of heatstroke. He died with third degree burns. Mr. Ward cooked to death, slowly and in excruciating pain.

In a 2001 government study, identical Mazda `pods’ were described as “not fit for humans to be transported in.” They were seen as “a death waiting to happen.”  In the intervening decade, there were other major reports, two in 2005, in 2006. In 2008, Mr. Ward was dumped into the oven of the back of that Mazda. When asked about the implications of Mr. Ward’s story, Keith Hamburger, the principal author of the 2005 report, responded, “That’s a matter of great concern because this is not rocket science, we’re dealing here with duty of care.”

A duty of care. In 2022, that duty of care meant two Aboriginal women, separately, abused. The list of Aboriginal women who died in custody, in Western Australia alone, is long: Maureen Mandijarra, 2012; Ms. Dhu, 2014; Cherdeena Wynne, 2019; JC, 2019. Many die in police custody, others in prisoner transport vans, others in their cells. Year after year, the Inspector of Custodial Services for Western Australia has described Anna’s ultimate destination, Bandyup Women’s Prison, the only women’s prison in Western Australia, as a hellhole. Speaking of Bandyup, the Inspector said, “I wanted to know how such an event could occur in a 21st Century Australian prison and to prevent it happening again.” First as tragedy, then as farce does not mean the second time is funny. For those forced to suffer, the pain is new, and yet not new, each time. The farce is in the expressions of surprise, discovery, concern of the perpetrators. It is concerning and disappointing … and happening somewhere right now.

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Ngayarta Kujarra by Jakayu Biljabu, Yikartu Bumba, May Chapman, Nyanjilpayi Nancy Chapman, Doreen Chapman, Linda James, Donna Loxton, Mulyatingki Marney, Reena Rogers, Beatrice Simpson, Ronelle Simpson, and Muntararr Rosie Williams / The National Gallery of Victoria)

 

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Nostalgia: For Gil Scott Heron and Afrofuturist Voices

April 2, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Nostalgia: For Gil Scott Heron and Afrofuturist Voices

(By Heidi Lindemann and Michael Perry)

(Image Credit: Sankofa Bird / Jeffrey Waller / Greene County African American Museum)

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“The death of four-year-old Langalam Viki in a pit toilet should never have happened”

March 20, 2023 by Leave a Comment

“Suffer little children, and forbid them not”

A boy-child was forced to drown in shit.
The Elders expressed shock, then promised
Change, then did nothing, less than and worse
Than nothing. Then a girl-child was forced
To drown in shit. The Elders expressed
Shock, promised great change, and did nothing.
Less than and worse than nothing. This month
A girl-child was forced to drown in shit.
The Elders expressed shock, then promised
Change, then did nothing, less than and worse
Than nothing. This poem, this story,
This song, we call this education.

In the Daily Maverick, Zukiswa Pikoli wrote, “The death of four-year-old Langalam Viki in a pit toilet should never have happened. The people who work for the Department of Education at the school, provincial and national level, who are responsible for this negligence and neglect should hang their heads in shame.”  Another South African, Melanie Verwoerd, wrote, “Thinking of the fear these little children must have felt and their desperate struggles for air in the last minutes of their lives is almost unbearable. Of all the things the government has neglected to deliver on, this is without doubt the most shameful.” On Saturday, March 18, in the town of Buffelsdoring in the Eastern Cape, four-year-old Langalam Viki was laid to rest. Langalam Viki drowned in a pit latrine at her school. When Langalam Viki did not show up at her home, her mother, went looking for her. Langalam Viki’s body was finally located and “retrieved”. What else is there to say?

On January 20, 2014, when five-year-old Michael Komape drowned in a pit latrine at his school, in Limpopo, James Komape, Michael’s father, said, “They should have helped. My son was going to school. I did not send him to die.” I did not send him to die, and yet he was sent to his death, by a State that refuses to replace the certain death sentences of schoolhouse pit latrines with safe and secure school toilets.

On March 12, 2018, when five-year-old Lumka Mketwa drowned in a pit latrine at her school, in the Eastern Cape, Lumka Mketwa’s family had serious questions. They asked who was responsible for their daughter’s death? They asked, who is responsible for children’s education, safety, wellbeing, when they are at school?  They asked, why is this not a national emergency? How many more children must die, how many more families must be haunted? Michael Komape’s family is haunted. Lumka Mketwa’s family is haunted. The State is not haunted. If it were, it would have acted.

Since the unending tragedies of Michael Komape and Lumka Mketwa’s respective and combined deaths, studies have “strongly argued for the total eradication of pit latrines in all South African schools, especially those located in the rural areas and informal settlements.” Anything less would be a gross violation of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. Others have noted, with a sense of urgency, “The right to basic education of a child is a requirement of human dignity. South Africa, through its new dispensation and conformity with human rights laws, is expected to transform and be consistent with the provision of the Constitution of 1996 that promotes and protects the best interest of the child.” Pit latrines are not in the best interest of the child. Meanwhile …

Zukiswa Pikoli concludes, “The name Langalam means “my sunshine” in isiXhosa. The Department of Basic Education should hang its head in shame for taking away grieving mother Nangamso Viki’s sunshine.”  The Ministers lie, the children die, the parents ask why … and the world, such as it is, moves on, and the cycle we pursue begins and ends in shame, or at least its invocation.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Lady Skollie: “Papsak Propaganda III: And I Was Really Far Out And You Thought I Was Waving, But I Was Drowning” / Everard Read)

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Someone died today

March 17, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Someone died today
Just round the corner at the small Woolworths mall in Klipfontein road
Most likely others died too
at the hand of some sordid human feud
Blooding the ground with futility
Not far away from here, not for any good reason

Some died today
not someone I know
I don’t know what she looked like
I don’t know her name
I don’t know her story

She died because someone decided to make a choice
They made a choice to use a firearm in a public space
They decided their outrage, their anger, their pain
was the only thing that mattered
And there she was in the crossfire
Meddling in the moment, her body simply moving as it always did, going about her business
no connection, no relation to the human holding the firearm
Sending a bullet meant for some other body

There was just that one fatality, I heard
And yet there were more today
I know this
because every day there are someones dying
for no good reason
for no good cause – as if there ever is
Every day somewhere there’s a mind failing itself, a heart strange to its own humanity

They die in violence
because we count the unimportant
we plague spaces with a presence devoid of love
Every day we fail our own humanity.

(By Khadija Tracey Carmelita Heeger)
(Image Credit: Cyprian Mpho Shilakoe: “Remember Me” / Revisions)
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In India, Maharashtra’s women’s jails are at almost 500% capacity. Set the women free.

March 13, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Last July, India’s prisons were at 155% capacity. 80% of the `residents’ were remand prisoners, people awaiting trial. Maharashtra prisons were at 105.8% capacity. Maharashtra has 60 central and district jails. Of them, one, Byculla Women’s Jail, is the only one dedicated for women and children.  On March 31, 2020, Byculla, capacity 200, held 352 women. That’s 176% occupancy rate.  In September 2021, as Covid raged through Byculla, the jail held close to 300 women. Today, Byculla holds 414 women. So, it’s gone from a `scandalous’ 105.8% … to a perfectly reasonable 200.1%?

Meanwhile, today, Maharashtra’s state prisons department reports that the situation in jails is equally catastrophic, if not worse. For example, the Thane district jails have a capacity of 3,794. They currently house 9,284. Among those jails, the Kalyan jail has a capacity of 540. It houses 2,061 people. The Thane Central prison has a capacity of 1,105. Today, it holds 5,057.

And then there’s this: “Although the jails in the district can accommodate only 60 women inmates, they were holding 290 women.” Women’s jails are at 483% capacity. Of course, the response of the state is to build more prisons. Not to question the process, not to wonder at what crimes, other than that of being women, these women have supposedly committed, not to wonder what happens to the concepts of law, justice, punishment even, when almost five people are crammed into spaces designed to hold at most one.

Activists, many of them formerly incarcerated women, have said that the government should consider decongesting prisons and jails. The government did just that, and the numbers soared to historic highs, especially for women. For women in Maharashtra and beyond, the process – rule of law, due process, presumption of innocence, innocence itself, justice itself – is the punishment. Often, it’s a death penalty. Cry cry cry, set the women free.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Smithsonian)

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Still crossing

March 6, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Still crossing

Still crossing the bridge
A determined President
And children of hope

Still leaving flowers
No one will turn us around
Edmund Pettus Bridge

(By Heidi Lindemann and Michael Perry)

(Image Credit: Jacob Lawrence, “Confrontation on the Bridge” / Smithsonian)

 

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3.3.23

March 3, 2023 by 1 Comment

Direct capture

3.3.23

I dreamt that when I looked at you
I saw your father
And when you looked at me
You saw my mother
The way they looked when we were young
And they were old.
Has it always been this way,
Each generation, hermit crabs,
Inhabiting the shells
Of the one that came before?

You are braver than your father.
I am more loving than my mother.
We will and will not be mistaken
For our forebears.

 

(By Randi Gray Kristensen)
(Image Credit: “Yielding to the Ancestors While Controlling the Hands of Time” by Lonnie Holley / Smithsonian)
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