Maud Motsoahae (left) and her late mother, Matlakala Elizabeth Motsoahae, with her granddaughter Lwazi (right)

NO LONGER ALONE

Matlakala Elizabeth Motsoahae loved being a grandmother. She loved all her grandchildren but she had a special spot for Lwazi, Maud’s young daughter. ‘Most days when I was at work she came here to play with her.’

But soon after Maud’s father died in 2012, Matlakala developed Alzheimer’s disease. Two years later, she was admitted to the Life Esidimeni Hospital in Randfontein. ‘I visited her often,’ says Maud. ‘She was in good spirits there and well taken care of.’

But in October 2015, a nurse told Maud that Life Esidimeni was closing. ‘So we waited for them to tell us what was going to happen. They never did. They just moved my mother but no one could tell me where she was.’

Maud spent a month looking for her mother and finally found her at Precious Angels. ‘But when I saw her she was in a terrible condition. She couldn’t even sit up on her own. Something was very wrong,’ Maud recalls.

The day after visiting her mother, Maud got a call. Her mother had been admitted to Kalafong Hospital with diarrhoea and vomiting. But when Maud later spoke to a doctor at the hospital he told her something different. Her mother was in a very bad condition.

Two weeks later Matlakala died. The cause of death is listed in the death certificate as ‘natural causes’.

‘After my mother died I was lost. I sat in a corner and cried for months and months. One day I was listening to the radio and I heard there was a protest march in town. Families whose loved ones had died were marching. I got up and drove straight there to join them. Since that day, I no longer felt I had to fight alone.’