Jakie Selebi is on a dialysis machine, but in getting one has seemingly jumped the queue at Steve Biko Academic Hospital where 82 patients were on the waiting list.

The Times reported on Wednesday that Suzette Janse van Rensburg was told she had a month to live and would have died had her family not paid R66 000 on the kidney treatment at a private hospital. Selebi got medical parole (South Africa’s version of a get out of jail free card) on Friday, and was promptly put on a state funded dialysis machine.

Van Rensburg’s son-in-law Martin Kried asked a perfectly valid question when he found out that  Selebi was being treated at Steve Biko Academic Hospital:

Why is he getting better treatment than my mother or anybody else in the same boat?

Janse van Rensburg, who suffers from chronic renal failure, approached Charlotte Maxeke hospital for dialysis but was told that there were 10 patients ahead of her on the waiting list. She was informed that she would only move up the list if other patients either died or received kidney transplants.

While you have to have sympathy for anyone needing a dialysis machine, it is very hard to be sympathetic  toward a disgraced police chief leaving prison and jumping hospital queues.

[Source: Mail and Guardian]