Pretoria - Tlotlo Thuo Ntehelang had no business being with his sick baby at Mamelodi Day Hospital - after all, other children in the ward did not have their fathers present.
This was according to security guards at the hospital who allegedly dragged Ntehelang out of the ward as his baby wailed pitifully in the background.
The guards then demanded that the baby’s mother, who had filmed the incident on a cellphone, hand over the phone. But she refused.
Nteheleng later posted the video on Facebook. He wrote that he had been waiting for a doctor to examine the baby, but the guards told him he could not stay with his child as the other children did not have their fathers with them.
He wrote two security personnel approached him as he stood next to the bed, pulled at him and instructed him to leave.
What followed was a struggle as he was hauled across the floor and to the door while mothers with their children looked on.
He could be heard in the footage shouting “you will not deprive me of being with my child”.
Ntehelang told the guards he was the child’s father and wanted to be allowed the chance to be just that, but the guard would not hear of it.
The baby’s mother took the phone as Ntehelang was dragged by his clothes. She told the guards she was taking a video. “I have a right to take a video. You have no right to do what you are doing. We will sue you,” she can be heard saying in the footage.
In his social media posting, Ntehelang speaks of the humiliation and being denied the right to parent his child. He asks if absent fathering is what the hospital security encouraged, saying the video is a typical example of how the black man’s dignity continues to be trampled on.
He says the incident reflects a policy to destabilise black households and is a result of a violent state victimising black people who did not agree with rules. It created division between father and child.
“(This is) just like they did with our elders during colonial and apartheid times.
“But the greater power is how they use a black body to assault another black body so that black unity can never be realised,” Ntehelang added.
He called on black men to fight injustice and be involved in parenting, using the hashtages #BlackFathersLetsRise!!!!, #LetsShareThisVideo because #WeAreGoingToParentOurKids.
Social justice activist Wendy Da Costa was angered by what she saw on the footage. “How dare these brutes storm into a ward full of small children and cause such chaos?”
Da Costa questioned their basic training and knowledge of the workstation they were deployed at.
“They are in a hospital, yet they do not respect the sanctity of the institution of sick people.”
More troubling was the absence of hospital staff in whose care the patients were, she said.
“Where were the nurses whose job it is to be in the ward? Where are the doctors and other staff who should have picked up the noise?” Da Costa asked.
Ntehelang, she said, had been stripped of his dignity and embarrassed in a room full of women.
She advised the parents to take legal steps against the hospital.
Security expert Mandla Makaota said such a degree of disorder and confusion should only be seen when security guards were fighting off criminals.
“The hospital guards have broken every security code in the book,” he said. “Who barges into a ward and attacks a man, ignoring crying babies and mothers?”
@ntsandvose
Pretoria News