You never really know people

In his testimony before the parliamentary committee investigating allegations of corruption in the South Africa Police Service, former Police Minister Bheki Cele said murder was not ruled out in Anele Tembe's death, but prosecutors refused to take the case forward. Anele was popular rapper AKA's fiancée, and she died after 'falling' from the 10th floor of a Cape Town hotel in April 2021. Her death was believed to be a su!cide, which her family and those close to her still dispute. There had been counter-allegations of abuse on the relationship, but mostly against AKA, who was subsequently shot dead in Durban in February 2023, almost two weeks after his 35th birthday.

In the wake of Cele's comments, AKA's father, Tony Forbes, came out in defence of his son. He said he wasn't a killer, wasn't aggressive, loved Anele dearly, and had even asked for her hand in marriage two weeks before she 'jumped'. Tony said the ex-minister's comments were hurtful and unfair. I do feel for him because it's definitely not pleasant to have your dead son's name dragged in the mud. I don't know if AKA took his fiancée life or not. In fact, nobody does. The two people involved aren't here anymore to speak for themselves. What I know, however, is that you can never really vouch for your child or loved ones. Our sweet, obedient and God-fearing children can be absolute monsters in other circles, especially to their intimate partners. It would hurt to hear someone describe your sweet little prince as abusive, but people are capable of such ugliness despite the good side they choose to show to those they hoodwink. There was another case this week at a Cape Town school, where a group of teens ganged up on a schoolmate, flogging him with an assortment of objects such as belts, a hockey stick and I don't know what else because I couldn't bring myself to watch. I'm sure the parents of those evil little thugs are also horrified to see a side of their children they didn't know existed. So next time someone claims they are being abused or have been abused by someone you love or think you know well, don't be quick to dismiss them and say oh I've worked with him for 20 years and he's the most humble of people, he preaches at church every Sunday, he donates to the poor and has no mean bone in his body, or whatever else you think you know. Abusive people are actually two-faced and pick who to show their ugliness. That's why there will always be people who will put their heads on the chopping block for them, believing them to be incapable of cruelty. People, men especially, buy flowers and cars everyday for women they beat to a pulp behind closed doors. Serial killers and child abusers are mostly known in their communities as upstanding people who wouldn't hurt a fly. Even Adolf Hitler had a legion of supporters too!

When a plan backfires

 

This former police officer, Lucky Mudau, went to the hospital where his partner, Lebo Monene, worked in February last year and pumped her body with several bullets before turning the gun on himself. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on where you're standing, he didn't die. He suffered spinal cord injury and became paralysed from the neck down. He was sentenced to 25 years in jail this week, but the court said he would not be imprisoned as there's no correctional facility that can accommodate a quadriplegic. He's unable to do anything for himself whatsoever, and now needs assistance to do even the most basic things.

The woman's family is upset with the judgment. They feel Mudau, by avoiding prison, has dodged the bullet, excuse the pun. They wanted him to be made to stand in court so they could be satisfied that he's indeed unable to do so. And who blames them for being suspicious? People who've been pardoned on their death beds have been seen walking, playing golf, and even dancing in some instances. What if Lucky Mudau is seen standing on his own two feet and shopping at Woolworths in a few months? What happens then? 

I wanted to say I hope he lives well into his 90s so that he can have sufficient time to carry his cross and reflect on the heinous crime he committed.  But because I strive to be a good Christian, I'll just keep quiet and pray for the children he orphaned.

It's just heartbreaking that he took a mother from her two children, a daughter from her parents and a contributing member of society. Now he's unemployed and helpless, and has essentially taken himself from his child, parents and other loved ones too. He's now a permanent burden to everyone around him. If life had rewinds and second takes, he would go back to that fateful moment and just walk away. Move on with his life and leave her breathing to move on with hers. Sometimes it's costly to always want to have the last say, as he knows fully well now, I presume.

SILENT BATTLES

Jabulani Tsambo AKA HHP

We are skeptical about pain we don’t physically see. We are doubting Thomases that only believe after seeing a visible scar.    

The death of South African Hip Hop artist, Jabulani Tsambo, whose stage name was HHP has broken the hearts of many South Africans and people from other parts of the world whose lives he touched. HHP was on record for disclosing that he had attempted to die by his own hand thrice in 2015. When he disclosed that, not many people took him seriously. As with most depression cases, people thought that he was attention-seeking or just exaggerating. In fact, one radio DJ came under fire for asking on air, “Why would someone that famous want to commit suicide?” The fire was not necessary. It was a question on many people’s minds. HHP was a delight to listen to when he spoke.  I’d actually sit down and listen to him. He appeared to be happy and very much in touch with himself and one would think he had it all – talent, respect in the industry, a huge fan base, and maybe enough money to keep him comfortable. Getting a breakthrough in the entertainment industry is not easy for many, but he was up there being counted among the best. There was just this aura of positivity and someone who was comfortable in his own skin about him. He appeared to be working his way out of the woods, but I guess the darkness that engulfed him eventually overcame the light.  In light of what has happened now, can it be concluded that all that was just a farce? Was he really positive one moment and then the darkness would engulf him the next?

The question comes back again, why would someone like that want to die and not enjoy life? Why would someone like that not count his many blessings? There are many paupers on the streets, people living wretched lives yet they don’t take themselves out, why would someone who seemingly had it all want to end it all? Those are the questions many would ask. I used to ask that question too, but I’m slowly trying to learn what I can about depression and how this horrible, horrible condition afflicts people and takes the joy out of life. This post by a writer who suffers from depression, Stirling Gardner helped me put things into perspective a whole lot more on the subject. It is not just ‘losers’ or poor people that take their own lives. Famous and seemingly well-to-do people also do. They have their own serious issues to deal with, regardless of outwardly looking like everything is honky dory. Think of America comedian Robin Williams, wildly popular musician Avicii, renowned artist Vincent van Gogh, HHP’s compatriots pioneering cardiologist Professor Bongani Mayosi, actress Shoki Mokgapa, actor Christopher Kubheka, and many others. What this means is, even your strong friends or those that seem to have it together also need looking out for.My fear, though, with big stars taking their own lives is that it brings so much disillusionment to the ordinary person suffering from depression. It could make one feel, "If people like HHP could not cope, there is absolutely no hope for someone like me." Yet HHP was just a human being like the rest. After getting off the stage, he would go back home to face his own demons and struggles.

Many a time we have thrown that word around  as if it is something very light, like, Oh my goodness! Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have broken up! Now I'm seriously depressed." That is not depression. It is quite a heavy subject, especially on the souls of those it afflicts, more so because it has no visible tell-tale signs. If you have a broken arm, people will drive you around, help with carrying your groceries, and make the right sounds to make you feel they care and they see your pain. It is a different ball game when it is something inside your head that is broken. People can’t see it. When it does show up, it usually manifests in very negative ways that probably further distances people from the sufferer.

I believe the black community needs a lot of assistance in understanding depression and its grave, excuse the pun, consequences. I was one of those people that thought depressed people must just make an effort to save their own lives, not allow themselves to sink. They could just take a walk, go and watch a movie, or listen to their favourite music, and feel better. Now I know better. A severely depressed person can't even bring himself get out of bed, let alone put one foot in front of the other to take a walk. There isn’t even a word for depression in most African languages, including my own, Shona. Any disease of the mind is just described as madness. It doesn’t matter if it’s autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression or anything in-between. If your brain is not functioning as it should, you’re definitely mad. The result is a huge stigma attached to all those with diseases of the mind, and many just clam up to avoid getting labelled. Also with the poverty levels in most black African communities, it only makes sense to go for medical attention when you are suffering from physical pain of some sort – headache, diarrhoea, high blood pressure, and the like. People are just walking around with no diagnoses, oblivious to the fact that they are depressed and in desperate need of medical attention. We need help explaining how to tell when your mind is hurting, because it does. What are the symptoms, where do you go for help? There is a big gap when it comes to addressing mental illnesses. 

 It is a phenomenon that intrigues and terrifies me. It hurts families, and people believe people who commit suicide are selfish. Experts say the signs are usually there, but most people do not see them for what they are. It’s just usually seen as acting out, until it’s too late. An example is that of the late Rhodes University student, Khensani Maseko, who committed suicide after allegedly getting raped by her boyfriend. She posted her birth and death dates, as well as other tell-tale signs that she was not coping psychologically on Twitter. People only started paying serious attention after she had already died.

Images Khensani Maseko posted on her Instagram before taking her own life

It really is time for that serious conversation, as black people, about how the mind, like any other body parts, also gets sick. When that happens, it needs to be treated and support is needed for people struggling internally. It is not a shameful thing when your mind fails to cope with life’s stressors. It’s not a laughable matter. It is a very serious issue that can cost lives when it goes untreated. It is costing lives, many, many lives, and one life lost to suicide is one life too many. Some suicides can definitely be avoided. 

I have written about suicide and how it is viewed in the African context, as well as mental health issues in general. Please visit the links below.

• The lonely world we live in, and being dark clouds in other people's lives
• Understanding mental illness in the African context
• Discussion on high suicide rate in Swaziland
• Appalling treatment of mentally ill people in Swaziland
• Silence is not Always Golden
• "It's My Life" are just songs Bon Jovi and Dr Alban sang, not a mantra to live by

The lonely world we live in, and being dark clouds in other people's lives

To Marguerite: Continued

 BY MATTHEW ARNOLD

 Yes! in the sea of life enisled, 

With echoing straits between us thrown, 

Dotting the shoreless watery wild, 

We mortal millions live alone. 

The islands feel the enclasping flow, 

And then their endless bounds they know. 

A high school friend took his own life by drinking a pesticide towards the end of January. He left a suicide note in the form of a video, and it appears the reason for why he had to die was because of a failed relationship. It is always a very sad day for me when someone commits suicide. It indicates that he felt his problems were too big to be solved, that no-one could help him, and that because of that problem, it was better not to breathe anymore, never wake up to see another day. That’s just downright sad.

Regarding this friend in question, what was particularly sad was that he was a pastor and musician with many people rallying around him, close to a thousand Facebook friends, yet he still felt alone in a dark bottomless pit.  The world is so fickle. Many of the relationships we have are actually quite useless when push comes to shove. There are really no life guards looking out for you waiting to save you. Everyone is absorbed with their own problems and not many people care enough to really follow through even when they can see that something is amiss. You just have to save your own life. When you feel yourself going off the rails, talk to someone. It’s time we started having some faith in counselling, and removing stigma from mental illnesses and acquiring as much information as possible on them. Recently in Swaziland, a man tried to hang himself but was fortunately discovered on time. The first thing the Good Samaritans did after saving him was give him a good hiding. I found that really appalling. How does beating up an unstable person help?

Following his death, quite a few people came forward to state that it did not come as a shock that he took his own life because there was always “something about him”. Yet no-one, especially his loved ones, tried to get him help. . This guy had attempted suicide a few times before and I wonder if he received any counselling. What happened to being your brother’s keeper? Society needs to be educated on how to handle situations where someone is a danger to himself and others. Sometimes we might even propel someone off the rails because we don’t know what exactly to do and end up saying the wrong things. Some years back on his Facebook page, someone was asking him why he wasn’t married yet, and he responded to the effect that a previous relationship had nearly cost him his life (through suicide!)Why do people ask personal questions like that on a public forum and cause unnecessary embarrassment, make someone feel inadequate because they haven’t done this, that or the other?

Another thing that was particularly distressing was that this departed friend, in his suicide note, blamed the woman in his life for taking his life. That was quite unfair, in my opinion. But bearing in mind that suicide is precipitated by an unstable mind; I can’t say I blame him. He was definitely not himself. I don’t really have the 411 on what really transpired, but nothing is worth taking your life for. Relationships collapse all the time, people get disappointed, and people move on and find happiness all the time. Your life can’t depend on one person. You can’t force people to want to be with you. How is that woman going to sleep at night after such utterances were made regarding her role in the death? She’s likely to always going to have a dark cloud hanging over her.

We need to be very careful what kind of people we bring into our lives. Sometimes your life will be heading in a glorious direction – until you get involved with someone who will just derail it for you and take out all meaning out of it. Sometimes things happen in your life, and if you are superstitious, they can make you think you are jinxed, when in actual fact you just have a toxic person in your life who continues to sap your energy, and before you know it, you have also developed mental health problems caused by the negative energy engulfing you. People should get their issues sorted out, because if they don’t, they become a dark cloud in other people’s lives.

May my late friend’s soul rest in peace💙

. 

Discussion on high suicide rate in Swaziland

Swaziland has a very high suicide rate. According to statistics released by the Royal Swaziland Police, 160 people committed suicide from January 2014 to January 2015. Of these, 126 were men. One hundred and sixty people in 12 months effectively mean about 13 people commit suicide in a month, and that’s a staggering figure. One of my friends, a beautiful woman called Siphelele Mngomezulu, is a Psychotherapist. I had wide-ranging discussion with her regarding why Swazis commit suicide at such an extensive scale, whether they are receptive to counselling and what can be done to curb this scourge, among other things. She’s a woman of many words, but an absolute pleasure to listen to. Please note that she spoke in her personal capacity, not on behalf of the organisation she works for. This is what she said:  

The high suicide rate in Swaziland is mainly cause by socio-economic issues, broken families, and lack of support in the family, but mainly it’s a result of financial meltdowns. People are not coping with finances, and then they commit suicide. Suicides also have a lot to do with relationship breakdown. You find that when women commit suicide, usually their husbands have cheated or left, and there’s no more money for school fees and other expenses.

HIV is also a major factor leading to depression which in turn leads to suicide. People are struggling to accept suicide as just a chronic ailment that you can live with. Right now our system is such that we initiate counseling for everyone that comes to the hospital. On arrival you are told to test. If as health workers we say, “We want to know your status before we treat you,” we are practically saying test or you won’t be treated. It doesn’t necessarily translate to readiness for testing for the patients. The comebacks are terrible. We get a lot of psychosis; people are failing to accept because they were not ready in the first place, mental meltdowns.  People will think, I went to the hospital with stomach problem and I came back HIV positive, how do I even begin to tell my husband. Doctors are increasingly resistant to treating people whose status they don’t know because they don’t want to treat the symptoms and instead of the source.

HIV is donor-funded. First they came with “voluntary counseling”, now we have provider-initiated HIV counseling. How do you say no to someone you need services from? When someone declines to get tested, ideally we should say it’s OK, but now the doctor will start explaining to you why it’s important for you to test and will demand the HIV results. So ready or not, the patient has to test. We cater for low to medium earning people who can’t afford to walk away from our institutions where very little is charged, R20 for consultation and treatment. Some, however, will accept that the test was a push in the right direction because they will get the right treatment and engage in more responsible behaviour.

It goes back to cope under difficult or new situations.

Rarely, you also get suicide when there’s abuse in the family, for instance children that are being abused by parents or teachers. Women in relationship ages like 17 – 40 have a lot of problems with their husbands and they feel they have to die as a result of those problems. Very few women commit suicide for financial reasons. They sometimes come for counseling because of stress and headaches, but seldom want to kill themselves for that. The majority of suicides are over relationships that break down, and most of them breakdown because there’s no money and they are not coping with the pressure. So the reasons are interlinked, somehow. They all have an effect on the other.

For men it’s usually because of financial pressures. They’ll think, “This woman cheated on me because I don’t have a job, I have so many debts and am not meeting family expectations.” I have also noticed there is a trend, there’s a season for a reason. In January we get a lot of attempted suicides because of school fees issues, finances are bad after the festive season. At some point in March you get a lot of school-leavers that have not done well in matric and then attempt suicides. Of course relationship-related suicides are all year round. But I find in the majority of cases, it’s a cry for attention more than a genuine wish to die, or fear of how will I be received having failed, more than wanting to die. If I’ve cheated and my husband has caught on, I’ll attempt suicide and go and lie on a bed somewhere while a social worker harmonises the situation, whereas if I had just gone home, the husband would have probably just picked up a sjambok, run after me and tell me to pack my bags and go. So I’m going to pretend I want to die. This is also evident in the types of methods people use to try and commit suicide. They’ll take Blue Death, for crying out loud it doesn’t even kill ants, how is it going to kill you, a whole human being? They’ll take an OD of a few Panados. Those who really want to die go for the weevil tablet, try to hang themselves, take very strong pesticides. Those who use the very small things, I always think they don’t really want to die.

Siphelele Mngomezulu: Psychotherapist

During counseling sessions, they want to call in the husband and harmonise the situation. They are not content with just being counseled and changing their mindset. The women are determined, “No! I want to come here, then you’re going to call my husband and make it a big issue and sit us down. And you’re going to make us ok. That’s what I want!” They feel getting counseling and advice on how to make their lives better isn’t enough. The man will say, “I want my wife here. I want you to tell her to forgive me, to tell her that I tried to kill myself because I love her.”

In situations where the woman tries to commit suicide because the husband is having an extra marital affair, she just wants to hear him on the hot seat saying, “I’m sorry, I’ll repent, I’ll make things better, I love you.” But two weeks down the line she’s back again after another suicide attempt because the husband is still not back. Sho it’s like forcing someone to change. They won’t change. You need to change your mindset. You need to be the one that’s better equipped to deal with it, than try to kill yourself, that’s my theory. Why must I die when I’m not in the wrong? You cheat, I die? How does it work? Why can’t I just move and start again? Most of the time we have women saying, if I move I don’t have anywhere to go, I can’t afford rent, I’m not working…” – socio-economic  factors linking again to relationship breakdowns. Root cause was the meltdown. The person will be attached and will say, “You took me out of school, I don’t have a qualification, you made me your wife, I have four children with you now, where must I go, so I’d rather die.”

These are even better than boyfriend and girlfriend scenarios.  A lot of girls try to kill themselves because their boyfriends are with someone else. Sometimes it’s about school fees. I know a child who went to pay fees at the bank. On her way back she lost the deposit slip and was afraid of the parents hitting her. She kept quiet. At exam time she was told she couldn’t write as she hadn’t paid. They couldn’t trace the money from the bank. She attempted suicide because she couldn’t face telling her parents that you’ve paid fees for the whole year and I’m not going to write exams because I lost the deposit slip. She really didn’t want to die. She just wanted someone to go and break the news to her father and make her look like the victim.

We live in a society that glorifies suicides. Our media sells with negative reporting, for some reason. Headlines like “Woman and man found naked doing witchcraft” get all the attention, but if a group of women stands up and goes to the rural areas to donate blankets, no-one wants to cover them. Reporters don’t want to cover you for doing good. They want to cover you for bad. Suicide is glorified. Also, in society when someone commits suicide, we talk about it. It becomes such an issue. And if we talk over and over about, it makes an impression on immature mind.  Suicides are then mimicked. Sometimes our children just wants to be centre of attention for a while, they don’t really know what they’re doing or why they’re doing it. A child committed suicide at a primary school and it was widely spoken about at the school. During that period I got a lot of children from that same school attempting suicide. Do you even know what it feels like to die? No. did you really want to die? No. Do you know where you go when you die? No. In about 8 out of 10 cases of children attempting suicide, there is someone known to them who committed suicide.

People that commit suicide might lose interest in things that they previously liked, suffer from lack of sleep, tiredness, and isolate themselves from other people. Some will become tearful with constant crying and general depression. But when you dig into a person’s problem and find the common trends of people who wanted to die but didn’t die, they have this underlying depressing issue, like, “I’m failing to come to terms with the fact that my son is autistic.” That’s real, they really wanna die because you have this feeling of not being a perfect mom, there’s turmoil in your soul. But some people that commit suicide are people that you sit down with and chat, and find tomorrow they’ve committed suicide. It’s not real, it’s a cry for attention, you don’t really wanna die. It’s difficult to pick up signs from a person who is doing it to get attention, because usually the signs just aren’t there. They think, “I might not die, I don’t wanna die, so what can I take to make me almost dead but not dead.” That’s when you get your Panado overdose, who’s gonna die from Panado? And they make sure they do it when they know they will be found before they die, like around the time the husband comes home from work. People that really want to commit suicide will send people away, they’ll be found dead for hours. They will create an environment that is conducive for committing suicide.

These methods also help us to assess the realness of the urge to really wanna die, because we could be spending a lot of time on counseling for people who don’t really need it. They just want your intervention to harmonise the situation they are in.  We spend a lot of time on those that clearly really want to die. Those that shout, “I’ll kill myself, I’ll kill myself, stop me before I do!” usually don’t really want to die but it is important not to ignore them. They should still be helped with whatever is making them even want to talk about suicide before they try. If you ignore them, they’ll attempt to take their lives to get attention and they could actually die. Even though we think it’s a cry for attention, we still don’t take it lightly. It’s only called attempted suicide if you survive. If you succeed, it’s suicide! You’re gone and we’ll never have answers. We’re left with questions and thinking if only I’d listened, if only I’d helped when she said it. Suicide is like a mental block and the only solution that stands is suicide. Those that commit suicide or try to do so for attention don’t get that. They deliberately go at it. That is the difference between someone who is suicidal and one who does it for attention. Those that keep things to themselves are really dangerous. Those are the ones you wake up to find dead with a packet of weevil tablets by their side.

That person, who is suicidal in more cases than one, suffers from a mental illness like depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or Attention Deficit Disorder, and at some point their brain shuts down. There is a relationship between suicide and mental illness. Those that attempt suicide for attention don’t have that, and during psychotherapy you discover that you can’t treat it because it’s not there in the first place, they just want your intervention.

I believe we all are mentally ill to a certain extent. I always say it’s a thin line between sanity and insanity. From time to time we cross over to insanity and then we cross back to sanity, just that some people don’t have the opportunity to come back. When they go, they go for good. And if you allow emotions, feelings, depression,  and situations to lead you to insanity too many times too much, you don’t have an accepting spirit, you don’t talk about things, you’re not going out there to get help, chances of crossing and not coming back are very high. People with addictive behaviour cope with situations in different ways. Some drink alcohol, in turn they become alcoholics because they’ve allowed problems to push them to the other side and have not come back from time to time to check if they’re still OK. So yes, our brains do get to a point where we do things that we don’t understand, that we wouldn’t do under normal circumstances. We should be able to trace back and say, “This is where it came from, this is the source,” and you should be able to deal with the source, not the symptom. Like if it pushes you to club a lot, understand why you’re clubbing, what’s pushing you away from your home so much. Deal with the root cause because you can’t solve clubbing for as long as the problem at home is still there. Set standards for yourself and keep checking if what you are doing is still normal.

People have a lot of mental illnesses, lots and lots and lots that go unnoticed. I was telling people the other day that so many people are functioning normally yet not so normally. We put it down to them having an attitude problem or taking out their stress on others at work. It’s a mental challenge and the only way to curb it is to confront the source. As long as you don’t solve it, it will eventually surface as abnormal behaviour.

Counseling helps a lot but people only come when they are referred. It’s a guided conversation that helps you think out of the box, someone talks to you without judging you, and helps you look at your situation from a different angle. Unfortunately Swazis are not receptive to counseling. They believe in tibi tendlu – you don’t air your dirty linen in public. You keep it to yourself. If my wife is cheating, I can’t go and talk to someone about it, I’m going to be mocked. And they don’t believe in telling their problems to a stranger or to each other. It makes it worse that counseling is a new profession in the African context and it’s mainly practiced by younger people. If an old man walked in and found me in a chair, he’d say, “What can you tell me about life, what do you know?” At the moment people are almost being forced to come for counseling, “Your BP is uncontrollably high, go for counseling.” If you ask them to come back again in a week for another session, they never do.  Because of limited resources, our follow-up system is almost non-existent. If you’re lost to follow-up, you’re lost.

Counselling works best when it’s voluntary. To force something down someone’s throat doesn’t mean they will swallow. We still leave people to exercise the freedom of choice in that regard, so that we know whatever advice or guidance we give will be received, it will be used and it will help.

Life generally presents a new situation every day. How do you handle it? You can pick up a child’s coping abilities from an early age. When you say, “No you can’t have sweets,” does your child throw a tantrum, does he cry, does he accept it? Like when I was about to have my baby, my mother said you can’t go through labour, you have to get an elective C-section. You don’t deal well with pain, taking out a tooth is a mission, labour will make you lose your mind. Lack of knowledge makes us miss a whole lot in understanding those around us. You know when you hit your child, does he sulk for a week, do they feel inadequate? If they do, then you know when you say to that child, “Ngifuna ukukushaya wena (I want to hit you) when you come back from school,” they might go and not come back because they are afraid. You should find ways of punishing your child that will not push them over the edge. Sometimes we push people around us over the edge because we don’t take time to understand each other.

Sometimes people don’t know that the walls are caving in on them until it’s too late. Others around them also don’t realise it until it’s too late. We hardly do mental education in schools. We need to educate parents and teachers on being observant of their children. You know there are children who, when the teacher says, “Who was making noise, I going to give you all three strokes,” they could wet their pants in fear. That is genuine. You don’t just wet your pants. To say to a child like that, “Tomorrow, I’ll get you,” that child you have put in suspense for the whole day and night won’t sleep nor eat. If that child has heard of suicide or knows how to commit suicide, won’t they try it before the next day? People need to be taught how to look out for the signs and know how far you can go with whom. We take things lightly and want to push people, keep pushing people, for what?

Previously counselors were found at the psychiatric hospital, so people have not come to terms with that. People still associate counseling with mental illness which is still discriminated against in our communities. The Ministry of Education needs to have counselors in schools in order to nip the problem in the bud. 

Related:

Appalling treatment of mentally ill people in Swaziland 

Silence is not Always Golden

Robin Williams’ death brought to the fore how little we know about mental problems, and how much we need to speak out when we have heavy stuff bugging us. I feel that our society is too cautious with discussing issues regarding mortality, worse when it’s suicide. It’s actually taboo to openly discuss it, even when people are at the funeral of someone who killed himself. Close relatives would rather attribute the death to another affliction than reveal that one of their own killed himself. Having a suicide in the family is associated with evil spirits. People prefer to skirt around serious discussions but it costs lives to keep quiet. Silence is not always golden.

I listened to Billy Crystal deliver a moving eulogy of Williams and marveled at the different ways in which our societies handle suicides. I knew just a little about how people in my part of the world handle funerals of people who would have committed suicide. When someone dies, people wail and some throw themselves to the ground to express their grief. Even those who didn’t really like the deceased will put up an act of bereavement, just so they won’t be viewed as witches. But after someone has committed suicide, people are actually not allowed to cry. A person who commits suicide is buried almost like a dog, no coffin should be bought, and no vigil should be held. It is believed that the person would have chosen an undignified exit from the world, so there should be no dignity bestowed on them.

I wanted to learn more about this way of doing things and consulted my father. As soon as I mentioned that I wanted to know more about how burials of people who committed suicide were conducted, he immediately became cagey. He interrogated me about why I was talking of suicide and I explained that I only wanted to write about it. He was not convinced and only responded two hours later, after careful consideration, I’m sure.

He said culturally, giving a person who has committed suicide a decent burial is like condoning what he would have done. Just literally throwing him away is meant to put his family members off suicide, because no-one would ever want to be buried like that. After one dies a natural death, his belongings are distributed amongst relatives so that they can have keepsakes. But when someone kills himself, all his belongings, clothes, and blankets are buried with him because people fear his spirit might still be lingering on his earthly possessions and might induce more suicides. If the person hangs himself in the bush, a grave is simply dug beneath him, the rope is cut and he indecorously falls into the grave. That is believed to make the deceased realise that his relatives were revolted by him and his choice of death, thus he wouldn’t come back to haunt his living family and push them to commit suicide too. I heard that traditionally a person who hangs himself is supposed to have his corpse beaten up first before the rope is cut. I don’t know if that is still practiced.

I just thought all this bad treatment of corpses is rather sad. Regardless of how someone dies, I believe they deserve a decent burial. Just because someone has died in a way we view as unacceptable doesn’t mean we have to forget all the good things they did while they were still alive.

Abusing corpses doesn’t help, talking about the scourge that is suicide helps. People are, however, not likely to come forward if they feel suicidal for fear that they would be viewed as being possessed by evil spirits.

"It's My Life" are just songs Bon Jovi and Dr Alban sang, not a mantra to live by

ROBIN Williams’ suicide was really shocking and heartbreaking. He touched a lot of lives, made a lot of people laugh, even when he had pretty heavy stuff weighing on his soul. He made us laugh till we cried, especially in MrsDoubtfire, which my siblings and I watched ad nauseum.  Yet he felt his life sucked so much that he didn’t even want to breathe anymore. In our naivety, we usually think rich people have it all, but here was a very rich person taking his own life because he felt he had nothing to live for. It’s extremely sad that he made people around the globe laugh, yet he could not make himself happy.

People all over the world commit suicide for various reasons, some which stop you in your tracks and ask yourself why someone would want to kill themselves for a flimsy reason like that. I found the suicide statistics from South Africa quite daunting. According to the South African Federation for Mental Health, there are approximately 8 000 suicides a year. Suicide is ranked as the third greatest cause of unnatural death in the country, with around 230 people trying to kill themselves daily, while 23 succeeded. For something that takes so many lives, shouldn’t organizations and governments be making as much noise about suicide as they do about Ebola, HIV and Aids?

According to the article, research showed that psycho-social factors such as untreated mental illness, substance abuse, family problems, trauma, rape, and poverty could contribute to suicidal feelings. The World Health Organisation found that despite the high number of suicides across the globe, help for people thinking of committing suicide was not prioritised in the public health system.

I know a good number of people whose loved ones took their own lives. It leaves people in pieces. My friend Alex’s brother committed suicide by taking rat poison. Alex said this left the family in a very bad emotional space:

“It’s a very painful experience and it leaves you with a lot of questions like why, how come, where did it go wrong? The saddest thing is you keep blaming yourself…’I could have done this or that, maybe it could have been a different outcome.’ You always wonder and sometimes you just try not to think or talk about it”, he said.

The brother had expressed his suicidal thoughts, and the family had tried to support him. He appeared to have changed his mind after the talk, so it came as a surprise when he killed himself anyway.

“I wish he had given me or the family more time to help him because we were trying to talk and help him as soon as we realized we had a problem. The problem is such issues don’t give you time,” said Alex.

I just wish people would talk to those close to them, and accept help, when they feel they are hitting brick wall after brick wall in their lives. There are solutions to most problems we encounter in the walk of life. And when there aren’t, then we need to accept that there are some crosses that we carry throughout our lives without ever putting them down. Everybody has them, some have worse. They are burdensome, but we can figure out how to make life beautiful, or at least passable while carrying those crosses.

For me, suicide can range from deliberately killing oneself using a method of one’s choice like hanging, throwing oneself in front of a moving train, taking rat poison, slitting one’s wrists, whatever. The most popular weapon of choice in Swaziland appears to be weevil tablets.

Suicide can also involve living life on self-destructive mode, making a chain of reckless choices, until one loses it. People who live like this are the kind of people, who when they die, are referred to as having dug their own graves. One might feel so overwhelmed by life’s problems and start drinking or abusing drugs so much that they become a worthless individual who loses possessions like phones, jobs, wife or partner, and eventually life itself. This loss of life can be a result of driving under the influence, brawls, or some other irresponsible behavior. Others might get so rash that they get promiscuous and end up contracting HIV and be so embarrassed or depressed that they won’t take medication. They will die a slow and very painful death.

When people commit any form of suicide, they feel worthless and that nobody cares or can help them. But these are not just their lives. Every time somebody dies, there are people who suffer massive heartbreaks; family members who have precious memories of the dead person, friends who grew up with the person, or people from the person’s past who would have hoped to reconnect at some point. There are a lot more people involved in our lives than we know. Nobody is a “nobody”.  Everyone has people that care about them. They might be few but they are there. And help is there all around us, if we look in the right places. I think people just shouldn’t get hysterical in crises, so that they can have the presence of mind to look for healthier options, not suicide.

My friend Peace Mwelase aptly put it when he said, “I wish we could read our obituaries before we died”. That would surely make us realise that there are people who regard us in high esteem in this world and love us very much, regardless of our status in society.  Our lives are so intertwined with other people’s, so much that we can’t really claim that our lives, in all entirety, are ours. When people commit suicide, whether quickly or slowly, they die together with bits of other people’s hearts, those who value them regardless of how little they thought of themselves. So essentially they would have murdered themselves and other people's souls.