Johannesburg – Anxiety and constantly looking over his shoulders fearing that he might not make it home the next day are what prompted Nqubeko Gumede to quit his job as a paramedic despite having nothing else to fall back on.
Speaking to Sunday World in the aftermath of the brutal killing of 40-year-old KwaZulu-Natal paramedic Phumzile Dlamini, Gumede said he too had on several occasions stared death in the face.
Dlamini died on Monday while responding to a call-out relating to a shooting incident in eMabhanoyini area in Umtshezi.
The area is situated in the KwaZulu-Natal far midlands.
The circumstances that led to the shooting are still sketchy, but it is believed that Dlamini and a colleague ran into a trap after receiving a call in the early hours of Monday morning that an unidentified person had been shot.
As the two paramedics were apparently preparing to transport the injured patient, they were allegedly ambushed by heavily armed men, killing Dlamini instantly. Her colleague was critically injured but narrowly survived the attack.
Gumede recalled how on one occasion they were kidnapped by the attackers at night and robbed of their belongings.
“There were about four of them, all armed. We were first taken to a shack. One of them held a gun to my head and they ordered that my colleague remove her clothes. I feared that they might rape her and kill us.
“Within 20 minutes, they instructed us back into the ambulance and told me to drive until we reached a bushy area.
The attackers took our belongings and instructed us to get off the ambulance and not to look back. They were arguing among themselves whether they must kill us,” he recalled.
He said they had to walk a few kilometres in the night before reaching a public road and requested help.
Gumede said surviving the near-death experience was the final nail in the coffin, which made him take drastic steps to quit his childhood passion.
“Becoming a paramedic was my dream job. I wanted to save lives. But as time went by, I realised that I had lost the passion because the job was becoming deadlier.”
The South African Emergency Personnel Union pointed to the failure of the Department of Health to implement proposals that the union had put forward.
“They seem not to care for the lives of EMS [emergency management services] workers and regard them as mere drivers and not professionals who should be treated with respect.
Now we are applying our minds on what is happening. But the possibility of withdrawing the service is on the cards,” said union president Mpho Mphogeng.
Mphogeng said that some of the proposals the union had tabled were the procurement of bulletproof vests, dash cams and police escorts, none of which had been implemented.
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