We need to Africanise our school curricula to suit our conditions, but this requires lateral thinking...
THE LITTLE community of St Wendolins near Mariannhill was threatened with forced removal and I was driving up there on a Saturday afternoon in 1982 to cover a prayer meeting, when I passed a crowd standing in a circle in front of the women's hostel at the racecourse end of Grey Street.
Crowds in that part of town are not unusual even today, but this lot were gazing intently at the ground. That was extraordinary. I pushed my way through to see a man lying on his side in a pool of blood.
"Has anyone called an ambulance?" I asked as I began to feel his throat. There was a pulse. No one answered.
I turned him onto his back. The wound appeared to be on his chest. I ripped his shirt open and streams of blood began to erupt from several holes. It looked like multiple stab wounds.
"There's a call box in the cafe on Carlisle Street," I said to one likely looking specimen. "Call 10111. Tell them to send an ambulance." He looked about uncertainly to make sure I was referring to him and then vanished.
In the meanwhile, I was trying unsuccessfully to stem the flow of blood with a piece of the man's shirt. At that point, a voice said: "if you pinch the hole and hold it, the blood will clot and slow the flow."
I did so. It seemed to work. I went on to the next hole. And the next. And the ambulance arrived and paramedics took over.
"How did you know what to do?" I asked the person who had given me the advice.
"I'm a doctor," he replied.
He fled for his life soon after when I threatened to f*** him up for not having done anything himself, muttering something about not wanting to get involved.
And a year later, I found myself trapped in a Kombi after a head-on collision near Vrede on the way back from Johannesburg with blood spurting from the hole in my thigh where my femur jutted out, and I began pinching the bloodied bits while waiting more than two hours for an ambulance.
This probably saved my life.
Actually, it was the knowledge of what to do that probably saved my life. Most people don't have that type of knowledge. Yet it's so simple.
"If I was dictator," Kate suggested recently, "I'd insist that primary health care and first aid were taught in schools. Passing this subject should be compulsory before getting your matric certificate."
Simple good ideas like that make me feel really stupid.
Making pupils learn about transmission of HIV in itself will save lives. (Remember that 25% of KwaZulu Natal's population is probably HIV positive.) Who needs Sarafina III?
Then there are simple things like checking a pulse, taking a temperature, what tablets to use to bring down a fever. (This is a country where people die from the 'flu. Most people can afford aspirin.)
CPR is also essential with the high rate of heart disease we have. First aid for gunshot wounds is already required in urban war zones like that across the road from the Natal Newspapers building.
Or simply adding two teaspoons of Milton to a gallon of water and letting it stand for half-an-hour will make it safe for drinking - a godsend for those areas recently devastated by floods.
I can see the Medical Association raising its hackles already. There'll be all sorts of warnings about the danger of having unqualified people attempting medical procedures.
But this is South Africa.
A man was run over by a truck in Stamford Hill Road this week across the street from Natal Newspapers and Game City.
He lay on the ground with his guts hanging out and bones broken for more than one hour waiting for an ambulance to arrive. It was only thanks to efforts by the owner of the service station on the corner, and two policemen trained in first aid that he survived.
This is not Mogadishu or Kigali. This is Durban city centre where two-year-olds get caught in AK-47 crossfire. We've done a bloody good job of learning how to kill each other. It's time we learned how to save ourselves.