Cholera in South AfricaBy: Derek Moyo on December 20, 2008
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Covering the cholera story was no easy task. I woke up at 4 a.m. to drive to the border town of Musina in South Africa, which for the past three weeks had been battling a cholera outbreak that has killed more than 1,000 people in neighbouring Zimbabwe.
A child suffering from cholera is rehydrated with clean water at the Madimbo Clinic in Musina. Photo by Derek Moyo. | The South African government had set up treatment centers at Musina Hospital and Madimbo Clinic. This is an out-of-the-way farming area popular with Zimbabweans who illegally cross the border into South Africa, work on farms for a few dollars, then begin the great trek to Johannesburg, known to many as Egoli, or "the place of gold." There was a cartoon in one newspaper making fun of Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president, boasting that one of his greatest exports was now cholera. I bought lots of bottled water and cooked my own food in the self-catering lodge where I struggled to keep cool. The temperature was more than 100 degrees and the old air conditioner was struggling to cope with the high heat. People I spoke to in Musina warned me to not shake hands with anyone, as this would make it easy for me to catch cholera. In the treatment centers I saw for myself that the once-high number of cases of cholera being reported in the early weeks of the outbreak was slowly declining. Many of those I found in the treatment centers were young babies lying down, wrapped only in diapers. |
I was told of adults that were also wrapped in diapers when the cholera outbreak broke. That is how severe the symptoms of cholera are.
Also in the town of Musina was the showgrounds, where more than 2,000 asylum seekers, most of them from Zimbabwe, slept in the open while waiting for their turn to apply for asylum.
Many told me about how tough life in South Africa was becoming after taking the risk of getting into the country illegally.
"This place is hell but it is a better hell than Zimbabwe," said one young man who told me he had applied for asylum and was waiting for it to be approved.
He is one of the lucky few. The asylum paper for many of these immigrants is a passport to a new life.
However, I feel sorry for the many young men and women who think life is Johannesburg is bread and roses. It is a concrete jungle, where many people struggle to put bread on the table.
I guess the cliché still goes: "All that glitters is not gold."
