A life cut short.
Zenizole Vena, 15, suffered a horrific ordeal, which presumably went on for days, when she was held hostage and gang-raped .
And when she managed to escape and seek help, the teen — who was bleeding profusely and barely able to walk — was turned away at both the Motherwell clinic and the police station.
It beggars belief that the very institutions that residents look to for assistance let Zenizole down in the final hours before her death.
Sindiswa Ntantiso, 58, who found her, told this newspaper how she had encountered a crying, bleeding Zenizole before 8am in Xhama Street.
She had last been seen by her family five days before.
Ntantiso took her to the Motherwell clinic, but was told they did not deal with rape victims.
They then turned to the police station, but there too were let down.
Zenizole died there, on the floor, while awaiting medical attention.
The nurses and police at those facilities failed her.
Though there may be protocols when encountering cases of rape, those civil servants failed to see her as a human being, a child in need of urgent medical care.
They viewed her as a statistic, a number that needed to be put through a system regulated by protocol.
They failed to show her care and humanity in her final moments after enduring an unthinkable ordeal that has, sadly, become too commonplace in our society.
Residents protested and demanded that the Motherwell clinic be closed. But that is not the solution — it will be to the detriment of that very community.
What is needed is a humane response to primary healthcare.
Granted, nurses and doctors are overworked, but patients must be treated with care.
The police too must do more to help the communities they serve — go above and beyond the call of duty and become the heroes South Africans desperately need them to be.
One takes solace that even though the government institutions let Zenizole down, she was shown warmth and kindness from strangers like Ntantiso, a jikeleza taxi driver and a woman who offered her blanket to Zenizole in her final hours.
“I have never been left with such pain in my heart, but I thank God I was able to be there so that at least one person could be told what happened to her,” Ntantiso said.
For that, we say thank you.
HeraldLIVE
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