Pictures on the front page of The Herald on Tuesday of broken toilets, mounting rubbish and filthy needles reveal the shocking conditions at the municipality-run Elizabeth Stuurman Old Age Home in Schauderville.
It paints a picture of societal failure.
When our senior citizens are reduced to navigating broken toilets and living in squalor, we must ask ourselves: is this how we honour our grandmothers and grandfathers?
The Herald did a tour of the facility on Tuesday, and the reality on the ground is a far cry from the safe haven our senior citizens deserve.
For two months, more than 20 residents have been left without running water because of the theft and vandalism of copper pipes.
The property has become a playground for criminals and vagrants, who freely enter the grounds through broken fences.
The Nelson Mandela Bay municipality’s human settlements political head, Thembinkosi Mafana, said the city’s facilities management team attended to a water leak at the premises, which was reported on August 4.
However, there was no water in large sections of the home on Tuesday.
Some of the issues noted included toilets without flushing water, overgrown grass in areas where snakes had been spotted, and dilapidated outbuildings that were damaged by a fire in 2010.
The lived experience of the home’s residents highlights a glaring disconnect between official reports and the actual, desperate state of the facility.
The newly elected chair of the home, pastor Neville Kluyt, said he believed the vandalism and the looting of infrastructure had caused the water supply disruption.
“[Vagrants] walk in here freely and do their own thing,” Kluyt said.
“We do not feel safe and feel like the municipality does not care.”
Our treatment of the elderly is the ultimate litmus test of our collective morality.
The municipality must take action and deploy permanent security at the home, restore a consistent supply of water and clear the overgrowth.
Our senior citizens should not be spending their final years begging for decent living conditions.
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