(4 December 1928 – 8 May 2020)
In 1916, during the Great War, at the Battle of Delville Wood in France, Reuben Scott, a young bugler of the 1st SA Infantry Brigade (Transvaal) became one of only 779 survivors at its conclusion. Subsequently severely wounded on the Somme by shrapnel to the spine he was successfully treated by an English surgeon applying a new technique. In 1943, during the Second World War, in the Battle of the Atlantic, a young South African radio operator on the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Test, Warren Elmore Smith, survived eleven hours in the water after the ship was torpedoed by a German submarine. After the war in an increasingly Nazified and racist Union of South Africa in which English speakers were victimised, Warren Smith was charged by a Johannesburg policeman in 1961 for molesting a Black woman and charged under the infamous Immorality Act. After the Public Prosecutor in the case refused to acknowledge extreme medical circumstances (a brain tumour), he took his own, and his infant daughter’s, lives. These honourable men, father and husband, were the men in Doreen Smith’s early life.
This woman thereafter saw years of music, friends and happiness interspersed with the struggles common to single parents, unhappy second marriages and the emancipation of women in the 1960s. She remained loyal to her protestant faith throughout and never challenged the crime against humanity that took her husband, such was the norm of the time. This notwithstanding, she made close friends with the most disadvantaged of all races and languages over the years. Her most distressing challenge came with the experience of being institutionalised several times for manic depression by a coalition of second husband, a religious minister and the inevitable male physician. Only students of social or radical feminism can appreciate this pattern of societal enforcement. She remained in good physical health all her life, with only a single serious hospitalisation for enteritis. She was a lifelong chain smoker and proud of it.
It was the sad experience of Doreen Smith in September 2019 when, at the age of ninety-one, her family was persuaded by a Johannesburg general practitioner presenting as a hospital doctor to allow her to be treated at home for a bladder infection. She subsequently spent 16 days in a neglected and dehydrated state before being diagnosed with sepsis and hospitalised at the nearby Donald Gordon Medical Centre (DGMC). After specialist attention she made a fair recovery. She was moderately impaired in mobility and mentality. A circulatory issue in her leg, leading to a bedsore, and noted by nursing staff, was dismissed by the discharging physician. Doreen Smith passed away less than a year later after not surviving well-intentioned surgical efforts at the Netcare Sunninghill Hospital to remove a septic foot. A complaint laid with the South African Medical Association (SAMA) against the original general practitioner for misconduct and misrepresentation in 2019 was unsuccessful. A similar complaint laid with the Health Professions Council of SA (HPCSA) was rejected. Further recourse was indicated to the courts. The same complaint presented to the DGMC was rejected on the basis that the GP was not employed by the hospital. The DGMC never followed up on the discharge of their patient. The specialists that had treated her were not contacted for assistance as her footsore was advised to be treatable by home nursing. The later months of her life were of unmitigated and misunderstood pain and distress. Exacerbated by external Covid restrictions. Only thanks to the intelligence and compassion of a young Orthopaedic surgeon at the Netcare Rosebank Clinic was the true nature of her septic condition revealed. The ongoing neglect of this patient by the DGMC and their plausibly deniable associates is now laid open for others to see. This experience of Doreen Smith is a warning to families, children, and carers that this painful and fatal outcome cautions against entrusting loved ones to the DGMC.
In the name of Doreen Smith, therefore, the Donald Gordon Medical Centre is challenged to follow the slowly burning Johannesburg Hospital (Charlotte Maxeke) and exit the carcase of the gutted mining camp that is Johannesburg. The Mediclinic family owners are in any case expected to exit the country after being targeted under the White Monopoly Capital smear from within the ruling political party. The hospital’s eponymous association with the respected business leader Donald Gordon (a primary school fellow of Doreen Smith) is also outdated and a dishonour to his generosity. It would be tempting to cite the DGMC and its associated Wits Medical School for failing to exhibit the essential characteristics of Humanism, of ethical behaviour based on sympathy and education. The prevailing culture there of arrogance, chauvinism, theism, racism, advantage, ambition, and politics would support that. Shockingly, Humanism is no longer even a relevant standard, having been co-opted by the fascism of the World Economic Forum and the malignant strategies of the “Global Liberal Elite”. From the disappearance of “Do No Harm” to the targeting of “Critical Race Theory” concepts of compassion, respect and dignity have become wholly captured and upended. Higher priorities such as Epidemics and Climate Emergency have overtaken the decency of individuals.
“The problem that we have is not globalisation. The problem is a lack of global governance” (Schwab,WEF)
“Remember your humanity, and forget the rest” (Bertrand Russell)
Gary Russell Smith