Africa Focus: South Africans divided over assisted suicide

rica Focus: South Africans divided over assisted suicide

by Stanley Karombo

JOHANNESBURG, May 4 (Xinhua) -South Africans have expressed mixed feelings over the recent North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria ruling in favor of assisted suicide.

On Thursday, the Court ruled that cancer patient, 65-year-old Robin Stransham-Ford, had the right to commit suicide with a doctor's help.

"The ruling will have some consequences for doctors," Ames Dhai, Professor of the Steve Biko Center for Bioethics, told Xinhua.

"What would happen is that the doctor would be reported to the Health Professions Council and would have to face a formal ethics inquiry."

The Doctors for Life International (DFL) concurred with him.

"It's very unfortunate that the law was introduced to favor few individuals at the expense of the majority of the population. This could be a turning point for South African law.

"It is setting a dangerous precedent - that will affect negatively many people," the DFL said in a statement.

The organization also expressed disappointment in Judge Hans Fabricius's judgment in the assisted suicide case.

The DFL was contemplating to challenge the ruling, and said the ruling was a foreign ideology being imported to Africa.

"The applicant is entitled to be assisted by a medical practitioner either by the administration of a lethal agent or by providing the applicant with the necessary lethal agent to administer himself," Fabricius said in his Thursday ruling.

He said he would provide reasons for the judgment.

However, Dignity SA said it supports the ruling as it addresses a serious human rights issue.

The organization said it was happy with the ruling which it said was positive in developing common law in the country.

A social scientist at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, Professor Duncan Mathews, agreed. He said that although assisting dying was not acceptable in Africa culture, he believed that "anyone who is in pain should be given an opportunity to end his/her life and no doctor should be held liable."

But the South Africa National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) disagreed, saying it would appeal to the ruling.

"Given the powers of the NPA, they are now affected because it means now they cannot prosecute the doctor, though we are of the view that he is committing what is illegal because active euthanasia in South Africa is not actively permissible," NPA spokesperson Mthunzi Mhaga told Xinhua.

Assisted suicide is unlawful in South Africa.

However, a medical student at Witwatersrand University, Toendapi Masaya said: "Killing is not part of our Constitution.

"The fact that one is terminally ill does not mean that he/she cannot be cured or treated - so to assist them dying is not right in the eyes of God. Let's hope that the ruling will not encourage our teenagers to commit suicide in the name of euthanasia."

Masaya said people need to be encouraged to have quality life and if they have meaning in their life, they don't want to end it.

Heated debates about assisted dying first surfaced in 1998 when a report produced by the South African Law Reform Commission led to the drafting of a bill, tentatively called the End of Life Decisions Act 1998. But the bill was not enacted.

This is not the first time that South Africa has passed controversial laws. The 1996's Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act marked the passing of one of the most controversial abortion laws in the world, entitling South African women of whatever age to a free abortion at a public facility.

In 2006 South Africa has become the fifth country in the world, and the first in Africa, to allow legal marriages between same-sex couples. Endi