During the short time that Professor Bongani Mayosi and I served together as members of the University of Cape Town’s council, I found his contributions on innovative ways of managing a transforming institution of higher learning insightful.
He was a role-model academic who inspired many and also a loving parent.
I remember in December, watching him during the health sciences faculty graduation ceremony at UCT switch roles from that of the official – the dean who read the citations and called out the names of graduating students – to the family man walking across the stage to congratulate his daughter Camagu, who was graduating in medicine.
It was one of those unforgettable and inspiring moments. With Mayosi’s wife, Professor Nonhlanhla Khumalo, also on the stage, those in the hall were witness to a delighted father-mother-daughter embrace, a family together celebrating the success of Camagu.
I will also always remember the smile on his face whenever I sought his ‘cardiologist approval’ for my wine-drinking habit – which I tried to put down to the hardship caused to a rural man such as myself by the scarcity of sorghum beer in Cape Town.
The suicide on July 27 of this eminent cardiologist, researcher and dean of the UCT health sciences faculty – is not simply a tragedy in academia.
It is the latest marker of an intractable crisis in South Africa, one that has been unfolding in slow motion for a generation – not only in public health but in a society generally. We are a country constricted by from every side by unprecedented pressure.
The idea of suicide offends and disturbs so much that we will do almost anything to try to strip it of its power.
In South Africa it was illegal from 1886 until 1968. This legacy lives on as a ghost in the phrase “committed suicide”.
It is rarely possible to know exactly why someone takes his own life, and suicide generally has multiple causes.But there is no denying that the impact of Mayosi’s death has rattled not only UCT’s academic community, but the nation.
For one thing, his death at age 51 occurred at a time when treatment for chronic depression and anxiety – often the precursors to suicide – has never been more available and more widespread. And a member of the medical profession Mayosi more than most would know of this.
Yet the SA Medical Research Council’s recent “Burden of Disease” study reports a steady and stubborn rise in the national suicide rate which is up a dramatic 25% from the 6,133 cases reported in 2012.
The study used postmortem data to calculate a more accurate estimate than Statistics SA’s recent “Mortality and Causes of Death” report that, based on death certificates from the department of home affairs, estimated that just over 1,000 deaths were caused by self-harm.
Deaths due to self-harm are nothing new. Sadly, Mayosi’s death once more confirms what we have known all along; that how we view and understand suicide is largely shaped by who we think is important.
Our response also tends to be the same – we offer a narrative that describes suicide as the lost potential of a life yet to be lived.
And then we stop there.
The urge to react this way is strong because we comfort ourselves even when filled with sadness.
When there is a horrible loss of a young person, especially a high school learner or university student, we are fairly confident in our assertion that things could have been far better if only they had stayed around.
But with adults, including teachers and professors, we are less convinced.
Young suicides are politically blameless in a way that adult ones are not.
If we consider suicide as a problem of the young only, it allows us to tell ourselves an oversimplified story in which despair is a passing personal crisis, not an endemic condition.
Indeed, we want suicide to be related to naivety and immaturity and to excessive emotional acting out.
We want those who die to be innocent victims, not imperfect, multifaceted beings who are trying to negotiate their way through complex personal, career, social, economic and political factors in a transforming and decolonising liberal white university.
Popular rhetoric is always looking for clean and simple stories in South African society. But the reality is that middle-aged people are wrestling with the same social and economic changes as young people, often in situations where no grand plan for change for the better is in sight.
Every year my collection of phone numbers that will never again be answered and Facebook pages that will never again be updated seems to grow as I lose friends to suicide.
At present, the South African broader community (including UCT community) is uncomfortable about making the individual tragedies of suicide into a case for collective change.
But the fact is, that in South Africa’s academic environment it can be easy to feel as if one has run out of options and choices; to find oneself in financial hardship or to feel unappreciated or even betrayed by colleagues in your academic fraternity. Alternatively to feel like a burden for relying on ever-decreasing welfare benefits or the kindness of others.
And we often pressure role models and those who are successful in their careers to turn things around for us all when in fact, austerity has removed the help people might need to achieve that turnaround.
Such people can become isolated by the demands of precarious work, illness or a change in circumstances. In such circumstances maintaining relationships with others is important - but it takes time and effort.
Changing harsh colonial-era policies that cause hopelessness may seem too big a task for leaders. Mayosi sought to resign twice but both his applications were declined.Rather than unpacking all of these issues we tie up the tragedy of suicide as lost potential. In the process we end up as a society that cares far more about some suicides than others.
South Africa can, as a result, feel like a country where there are no second chances – and middle age is where this really hits home.
Every suicide, of a young or an older person, deserves sadness and reflection.
To address those things that are causing despair, dislocation and loss of hope among those most at risk of suicide requires policy change and far more than a vague commitment to the happiness of all.
To counter their despair people need to know there are tangible ways of turning things around.
When it comes to dealing with suicide we want so much to focus on prevention among the young. Placing all the emphasis here allows us to think in terms of a race yet to be run.
To address the middle-aged who are at risk of dying by suicide is much harder.
It requires that we do something about why people like Bongani Mayosi could feel he had already run his race and lost.
But we dare not ignore them.
Nkosikhulule Xhawulengweni Nyembezi is a researcher, policy analyst and human rights activist based at UCT law school..