Ian Hanson and Phumzile Tyulu from activist group Ndifuna Ukwazi. Hanson says that in reality every day people are being beaten by vigilante mobs. Credit: Melany Bendix/IPS

By Melany Bendix
CAPE TOWN, Mar 11 2014 (IPS)

Margaret Feke* got off a taxi in Khayelitsha, a township in Cape Town, South Africa, carrying a package of new clothes for her son who was due to leave for his traditional initiation into manhood in the Transkei the following day. 

The clothes, which according to custom her son would wear once he completed his initiation, had cost 180 dollars. Feke, who earns 15 dollars a day as a domestic worker, had been paying for the new outfit in instalments and had just made the final payment after receiving her Christmas bonus in December.

Within minutes of getting off the taxi, a group of young men attacked her from behind, bludgeoning her arms with heavy sticks so that she would drop the package and her handbag. They grabbed her goods and fled, leaving the stunned 46-year-old sprawled in the middle of the road.“People in general aren’t in support of this violence, but they are fighting back the only way they know how." -- Ian Hanson from activist group Ndifuna Ukwazi

“I felt like my heart would die,” the single mother of three told IPS. “For six months I paid and paid for those clothes. My son was leaving the next day, I had no more money, I didn’t know what to do. I just sat there and cried.”

A neighbour advised her not to bother going to the police but to rather “call the community” to find and punish the culprits.

“That night they found those boys — one of them was even wearing my son’s initiation jacket. They took them to a field and beat them,” she recalled.

The field Feke refers to has been dubbed the “Field of Death” in Khayelitsha, where vigilante “justice” is often meted out by members of the community.

Two years ago in March 2012 it was the site of a triple murder when three men accused of robbery were “necklaced” — a gruesome practice used to kill suspected police informers during the anti-apartheid struggle. It involves placing car tyres around the victim’s neck, dousing them with petrol and setting them alight. Photos of the vigilante necklacing were captured on the mobile phones of some of the 1,000-strong mob and circulated online, sending shockwaves through the rest of South Africa.

But shocking as they may be, vigilante killings in South African townships are nothing new. A 2009/2010 study conducted by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation reported that an average of two vigilante killings took place in the country every day.

Khayelitsha — the country’s most murderous area, according to South African Police Service (SAPS) statistics — accounts for far more of its fair share of this statistic.

At least 78 people — or an average of five per month — were killed by angry mobs in Khayelitsha between April 2011 and June 2012, according to an August 2012 SAPS Task Team Report.

SAPS spokesperson Solomon Makagale failed to comment on the vigilante attacks in Khayelitsha.

But activists on the ground told IPS that they are certain mob attacks have increased over the past year.

“The reality is that every day people are being beaten by vigilante mobs. And the fact is that people are murdered for the very same crimes they are beaten up for, even crimes as ‘small’ as stealing a mobile phone,” Ian Hanson from activist group Ndifuna Ukwazi, who collected affidavits from residents for the Commission of Enquiry into Policing in Khayeltisha, told IPS.

The independent commission was established in 2011 by Western Cape Premier Helen Zille after a group of civil society organisations submitted a formal complaint that Khayelitsha was in crisis due to inept, dysfunctional and corrupt policing. The commission is expected to present its findings in June.

Phumzile Tyulu, a former Khayelitsha resident and a Ndifuna Ukwazi member who worked with Hanson to collect affidavits for the commission, told IPS that vigilantism has become endemic in the sprawling township.

“People are poor, very poor, so to be robbed of your mobile phone, or the only R20 [two dollars] you have, is very serious,” he said.

“The police don’t help. The courts don’t help. Even if the perpetrator is caught red-handed, he’ll be on the streets the next week. The community sees this and they’re tired of it. They have lost all faith in the entire criminal justice system, but the police in particular. The result is that it is now normal for people to turn to the community when a crime is committed, not the police.”

His views are backed up by a Community Perception Survey into Policing in Khayelitsha, ordered by the Commission of Enquiry, which was finalised in late February.

Close to one-fourth of residents surveyed said the police “did nothing” when they reported crime. And a majority of Khayelitsha’s half a million residents live in a perpetual state of fear, with many saying they do not feel safe in their own community.

“Vigilantism is a response to this constant victimisation in their own community,” Hanson said.

“People in general aren’t in support of this violence, but they are fighting back the only way they know how,” he added.

Almost a quarter of Khayeltisha residents view vigilantism as justified, and say mob justice is more effective than police intervention.

Feke agrees. “After they beat those boys, they confessed and they took the community to a shack where my things were. I got all my son’s clothes back, and my handbag with my phone still in it. If I had gone to the police that would never have happened, never.”

But there are also cases of families who have been devastated by vigilantism.

“There are a lot of cases of mistaken identity,” Tyulu explained. “And there are cases where someone has a grievance with someone and so they lie to the community and say the other guy has robbed him. There is no ‘fair hearing’; the only interrogation that takes place is during the beating itself. Suspects are beaten until they confess, whether they are guilty of the crime of not.”

*Name changed on request.

Thembela, a 26-year-old lesbian from Gugulethu, Cape Town, seldom leaves her home at night for fear of being the victim of “corrective rape”. Credit: Melany Bendix/IPS

By Melany Bendix
CAPE TOWN, Feb 14 2014 (IPS)

“Every day I live in fear that I will be raped,” said Thembela*, one of thousands of lesbians across South Africa being terrorised by the scourge of “corrective rape”.

By living openly as a lesbian in Gugulethu township in the Western Cape, Thembela says she is at high risk of being assaulted by men intent on “correcting” her sexual orientation through rape.“Lots of my friends have been raped for being lesbian. It’s not an unusual thing.” -- Thembela

“They do it because they hate what we are, because they feel threatened by us,” said the 26-year-old filmmaker for the local documentary television series “Street Talk”. 

“I live with my partner and we live alone. Many guys in my neighbourhood know this and at any time they can come and kick down our door and rape us. They usually come in gangs and we would be powerless to stop them,” she told IPS.

“Lots of my friends have been raped for being lesbian. It’s not an unusual thing.”

Horrific reports of corrective rape are rife in South Africa, but just how many women and men have been raped and even murdered due to their sexual orientation is still unknown.

It is this dearth of data on hate crime that the country’s Department of Justice and Constitutional Development hopes to address with the “Policy Framework on Combating Hate Crimes, Hate Speech and Unfair Discrimination”.

The policy is the foundation for what will later become law and aims to “send a clear message that hate crimes will not be tolerated in South Africa,” according to Justice and Constitutional Development Deputy Minister John Jeffery.

He said the new law would create a separate criminal category for hate crimes.

Although it was created in direct response to the increase of hate crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people in South Africa, the policy covers all forms of hate crimes, including xenophobic and racist attacks and hate speech.

During a briefing in late January, Jeffery said the policy framework had been “largely finalised” and would be released for public debate “shortly”.

Cobus Fourie of the South African Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation told IPS that having hate crimes as a separate category would shed light on how serious the issue was.

Ingrid Lynch, research, advocacy and policy coordinator for the Cape Town-based LGBTI lobby group Triangle Project, said the new legislation would meet the “desperate need” to monitor the extent of LGBTI-related violence and hate crimes.

“Without a crime category that recognises the influence of homophobic prejudice in violence against LGBTI people, we have no hope of systematic data collection and monitoring of the problem,” she told IPS.

“What we currently know is only the tip of the iceberg.”

Law Cannot Change “Hateful Attitudes”

While lauding the policy as a “symbolic” move to recognise and protect marginalised individuals’ plight, constitutional law expert Professor Pierre de Vos cautioned that law alone will “not change people’s hateful attitudes”.

He pointed out that South Africa already had several progressive laws protecting the rights of LGBTI people, including the legalisation of same-sex marriage. However, in practice these laws do little to protect LGBTI people increasingly faced with violence and victimisation.

“It will take much more than a new piece of legislation to address hate crimes,” added Lynch, who said “being able to experience [constitutional] rights continues to be the main challenge for LGBTI people in South Africa.”

Sibusiso Kheswa, advocacy coordinator for Gender Dynamix, the first African organisation focusing solely on transgender rights, argued that it was pointless introducing new laws, however well intended, if the criminal justice system could not implement them effectively.

Kheswa told IPS the root of the problem was that the system was “not victim friendly”, starting with the South African Police Service (SAPS) – a victim’s first point of contact.

Lynch agreed and said her research had found that LGBTI survivors of assault and rape are “typically confronted with humiliation, dismissal and even direct victimisation by the police because of their sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Kheswa said this resulted in victims not reporting crimes out of “fear of secondary victimisation by the police and other players in the criminal justice system”.

“‘It would be a mistake to think that we can achieve better outcomes for survivors of LGBTI hate crimes within a broken criminal justice system,” warned Lynch. “We need structural transformation of the entire system, along with specific attention to LGBTI concerns.”

Education is Key

Fourie and de Vos both believe that education is key to reducing hate crime against LGBTI people in the long term.

“There should be far more vigorous education against prejudice, from basic school level right up to the government departments,” said de Vos. “But for that to happen you need political will.”

Johan Meyer, health officer for Johannesburg-based LGBTI advocacy group OUT, was upbeat that there was a good measure of political will behind the policy framework.

“There is always concern that the hate crime law might be like South Africa’s other progressive laws that are supposed to protect LGBTI people.

“But I do believe that in this case things are different, since there is real and committed involvement on national level from the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, as well as from the SAPS and the National Prosecuting Authority,” he told IPS.

Back in Gugulethu where Thembela and her partner triple bolt their doors and seldom venture out at night for fear of being attacked, she too is hopeful that the fledgling law will one day allow her to live free of fear.

“If we had our own law to protect us, a law that really punishes these guys for raping us, it might make them think twice. And if they think twice, maybe they will stop and I can stop being scared all the time.”

*Surname withheld to protect identity.

Queenie Magubane, 38, of Khayelitsha township in Cape Town, South Africa, uses a bucket to collect the water that constantly leaks from her outdoor tap. It is one of thousands of faulty taps across South Africa. Credit: Melany Bendix/IPS

By Melany Bendix
CAPE TOWN, Feb 12 2014 (IPS)

The South African government’s earnest rush to provide water to millions of people post-apartheid may have jeopardised its attempts to provide services to the country in the long run.

South Africa is the 30^th driest country in the world, yet it is one of the fastest-growing water consumers. According to the National Treasury’s 2012 Budget Review, demand for the scarce resource is increasing so rapidly that it is set to outstrip supply as early as 2030.

But this nation is in a race against time to plug the holes in its leaky water supply system, which is allowing so much of the crucial resource to drip away that the country’s water security is now at risk.“Without water we cannot achieve our government’s priorities, such as infrastructure development and food security.” -- Rejoice Mabudafhasi, deputy minister of the DWEA

Jay Bhagwan, executive manager for water use and waste management  at the Water Research Commission (WRC), said that this water wastage was a natural result of the government having to quickly extend the water supply to a large majority of the country’s 51 million people post-democracy.

“After 1994 we had to give more than half the population access to water. This obviously put a lot of pressure on resources and capacity,” he told IPS.

“Maintenance just wasn’t a high priority and we are starting to see the consequences of that now.”

A 2013 WRC study revealed that South Africa is losing an average of 1.58 billion kilo-litres of water a year — the equivalent of 4.3 million swimming pools of water. The water wastage, attributed mostly to leaky pipes and theft, represents more than a third of all municipal water.

Shortage of Skilled Engineers

Kobus van Zyl, associate professor of hydraulic engineering at the University of Cape Town, whose speciality is water distribution systems, agreed that providing water to those who were denied this basic service under apartheid was a contributing factor to the current water woes.

But he argued that the mass exodus of engineers and project managers over the past 20 years was the key reason.

“The huge problem is that we’ve lost a lot of expertise, both on a local level in municipalities and at a national level within the Department of Water Affairs,” he told IPS.

“As a result there is a massive shortage of engineers and project managers, and you simply cannot manage a distribution system properly if you don’t have enough people with the necessary expertise to do so.”

Of the more than 230 municipalities in South Africa, 79 have no civil engineers or technicians and only 45 have civil engineers, according to a report by Allyson Lawless, a former president of the South African Institute of Civil Engineering.

To illustrate how extreme the situation is, Lawless’ report pointed out that there are more civil engineers serving the zoo infrastructure in Auckland, New Zealand, than in 86 percent of South Africa’s municipalities.

Water Loss Affects Development

Aside from costing the South African economy a hefty 642 million dollars a year, widespread water wastage jeopardises the country’s socio-economic development.

“Water is not just part of the economy, it is the lifeblood of our economy,” Christine Colvin, senior manager for the World Wide Fund for Nature’s freshwater programme in South Africa, told IPS.

“Expecting to maintain the economy and grow it without water is like expecting someone to carry on living after draining all the blood from their body.”

Rejoice Mabudafhasi, deputy minister of the Department of Water and Environmental Affairs (DWEA), agreed.

“Without water we cannot achieve our government’s priorities, such as infrastructure development and food security,” Mabudafhasi told IPS.

She added that water shortages would derail the government’s plans to deliver this basic service to hundreds of impoverished communities throughout South Africa, who still do not have access to clean, running water.

Van Zyl pointed out that South Africa’s poorest areas are likely to be hardest hit by water shortages.

“The drier parts of the country will be the first to experience shortages. These are commonly areas where the previous ‘homelands’ were established, which are still radically impoverished,” he said.

He added that “warning signs are now very clear in South Africa — demand will outstrip supply unless immediate action is taken.”

It seems South African President Jacob Zuma has taken heed of these warning signs by asking DWEA’s minister Edna Molewa to reduce water loss by 50 percent in 2014.

Her department has stepped up its War on Leaks project, which focuses on getting communities and municipalities to work together to report and fix leaks.

As to whether the DWEA’s efforts will ensure South Africa has enough water for the future, van Zyl said the initiatives are positive but more needed to be done in order to turn around the crisis.

“With what is currently being done, the best we can hope for is to plug a few holes. We need to do more because time’s running out.”

Specialised sexual offences courts could make a dent in South Africa’s staggeringly high rape rate by speeding up the turnover of rape cases and thereby convicting more rapists and encouraging more survivors to report the crime. However, unless the South African government puts its money where its mouth is, the so-called “rape courts” will amount to nothing more than a “nice idea”.

This is according to several experts in the field who say that major funding shortfalls are the single-biggest barrier to the government’s plan to roll out 57 specialised courts within three years.

“These courts have been a ‘nice idea’ since 1993, when the first sexual offences court was successfully piloted in Cape Town. But unless the government puts some serious budget into it, they will remain nothing but a ‘nice idea’ for the next 20 years,” Lisa Vetten, a research associate at the Wits Institute of Social and Economic Research, told IPS.

As South Africa joins the international community in celebrating 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence from Nov. 25 to Dec. 19, the country still has one of the world’s highest incidents of rape. The most recent South African Police Service (SAPS) statistics suggest that a person is raped every 11 minutes. However, the number is likely to be far greater as South Africa’s Medical Research Council estimates that only one in 25 rapes is reported, while other human rights groups claim that the number is one in nine.

“Barriers to reporting the crime are a lack of faith in the criminal justice system and the medical services, and the secondary trauma sometimes suffered by survivors at the hands of the SAPS and health services,” Dr. Kantharuben Naidoo, head of the Family Medicine Department at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, wrote recently in the South African Medical Journal.

Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Jeff Radebe hopes that the sexual offences courts will break down these barriers by speeding up the turnover time of cases, securing more convictions and helping to create a survivor-centred criminal justice system, which in turn should reduce secondary trauma.

To achieve this, each sexual offences court will be assigned dedicated personnel, including specially-trained prosecutors, a designated social worker and a rape survivor support officer. Each court will also provide facilities such as private waiting rooms for witnesses and rape survivors, and technology to allow them to testify without having to come face-to-face with the accused.

Budget constraints

In August, Radebe announced that there was funding for 22 sexual offences courts to be up and running within the 2013/2014 financial year, with the remaining 35 courts to be opened over the next two years.

But according to rape survivor and activist Michelle Solomon, only one is currently operational — the Butterworth Court in Transkei. The court was re-launched as a sexual offences court in August.

“As it stands right now, the sexual offences court is a myth,” she told IPS, pointing to the National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA) budgetary shortfall — more than 20 million dollars for this year alone — as a key reason. Among other functions, the NPA is responsible for day-to-day criminal prosecutions in South Africa.

“These courts are incredibly expensive to set up and maintain, which is one of the main reasons they were put on hold back in 1996,” said Solomon.

South Africa’s first sexual offences court was introduced in 1993. The pilot proved to be a success, maintaining a conviction rate of up to 80 percent a year and speeding up the turnaround time between the reporting and finalisation of cases. This led to 74 specialised courts being approved before a moratorium was placed on them in 1996.

“There were a number of challenges that led to their demise,” Radebe has said previously. He cited a lack of a “dedicated budget, training of court personnel and a monitoring and evaluation mechanism for these courts.”

Kathleen Dey, executive director of the non-profit counselling organisation Rape Crisis, is optimistic about the special courts’ potential to succeed the second time round. “If set up properly, they will get more rapists in jail and more survivors to report.”

However, she conceded that the NPA “currently does not have the budget” to set up the courts, adding that government was looking for foreign donors to assist.

“Foreign investment may be helpful, but I’m sure the South African government could fund this adequately if, for example, we spent less on the president’s house,” Vetten told IPS, referring to the 24 million dollars that has been spent on “security upgrades” for President Jacob Zuma’s private residence in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal.

Department of Justice spokesperson Advocate Mthunzi Mahaga failed to respond to IPS’ repeated requests for comment on the budget for the sexual offences courts.

Vetten pointed out that the lack of budget is not the only stumbling block to the roll out of the special courts.

“To secure rape convictions, you need experienced prosecutors. With the NPA grappling with a vacancy rate of around 25 percent, there are simply not enough of them,” she said.

Solomon emphasised that the training of all personnel — from prosecutors through to frontline police officers — is crucial to the success of the sexual offences courts.

“One of the biggest flaws with the criminal justice system is the poor training of the officer behind the charge desk. Often they refuse to take rape charges and when they do they take appallingly bad statements. This undermines any good work by detectives and prosecutors,” added Vetten.

Breaking the silence

Despite the many hurdles to implementing the special courts, Dey is confident a survivor-centred approach will make a long-term impact.

“The testimony of the survivor is crucial in most rape cases. Specialised courts with trained personnel, who will guide and support survivors through the process and help them to understand how the criminal justice system works, will go a long way in helping to secure more convictions,” she said.

Charlene Lau, who was raped by her father as a child, and gang raped at 14 and then again at 26, agreed a justice system that is “sensitive to survivors” could make all the difference.

Lau experienced first-hand how “anti-survivor” the system is and has now become an activist for change with her Joy Campaign that encourages others to speak out about rape.

“If executed in a manner that addresses more than just the backlog of cases, these courts may encourage rape survivors to break their silence, helping to put more perpetrators behind bars,” she told IPS.

From Apr. 1, the South African Department of Health introduced fixed-dose ARVs. Activists and health professionals have welcomed the FDAs as easier and more convenient for patients. Credit: Nastasya Tay/IPS

By Melany Bendix
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, May 6 2013 (IPS)

“If I don’t have my pills, I don’t know what will happen. I will probably get sick again, very sick. Maybe I will die this time,” says Xoliswa Mbana* as she readies her four young children for school in the impoverished informal settlement of Masiphumelele, in Cape Town, South Africa.

Two years ago Mbana, who was diagnosed HIV-positive in 2008, had a CD4 count of less than 200. Dangerously ill, she was convinced by nurses at her local clinic to begin antiretroviral (ARV) treatment.

“I didn’t trust the muti (a Zulu word for traditional medicine) at first because I had heard a lot of bad things about them. But I was dying; I had no choice. When I started to feel better I was so happy. The government must please not take my happiness away from me,” the 42-year-old tells IPS.

Mbana, who is among the 5.5 to 5.9 million South Africans the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS estimates are living with the disease, is referring to her fear of being cut off from her life-saving pills. It is a fear that is not unwarranted.

Last May she was forced off treatment for three weeks because her local clinic ran out of ARV drugs. It was one of hundreds of distribution points across six of South Africa’s provinces that were struck by a serious supply shortage, the most recent of several stockouts that have plagued the state-funded ARV treatment programme since its launch in 2004.

It is the South African Department of Health’s (DoH) shaky ARV supply track record that has treatment activists sounding alarm bells over the Apr. 1 introduction of fixed-dose ARVs (FDAs).

Until now, state-funded ARV treatment has comprised three different pills taken at different times during the day. The new FDA combines the three key agents from these pills in a single pill that only needs to be taken once a day.

Although welcoming the FDAs as easier and more convenient for patients, activists and health professionals alike have warned that a stockout of the drug could have a catastrophic effect on the country’s public HIV/AIDS treatment programme — the largest of its kind in the world.

“With the individual ARV drugs, if there is a shortage of one ARV then people can still take the other two drugs, though it’s not ideal. However, if there’s a stockout of the fixed-dose pill, then patients will have no recourse,” Mark Heywood, executive director of health and social justice advocacy group Section 27, tells IPS.

Dr. Kevin Rebe of the Anova Health Institute, which runs the Health4Men programme focusing on HIV prevention and treatment, agrees.

“The risk of FDAs is that there isn’t really a good fall-back,” he tells IPS.

He points out that even a few missed doses could result in resistance to treatment: “You need to get 95 out of every 100 doses right, otherwise you risk treatment failing and the patient would then have to move on to a different, possibly more complex and more costly, treatment. So if there is a stockout (of FDAs), the implications could be severe.”

Professor Linda Gail Bekker, deputy director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at the University of Cape Town, adds that a stockout could be a “serious health hazard” for dangerously ill people who have just started ARV treatment — people like Mbana, who could have died if there had been a stockout when she first began treatment in 2010.

Bekker is equally concerned that stockouts could set back hard-won gains in convincing HIV positive people to begin treatment and to then stick to a strict drug regimen.

“We really have to indoctrinate HIV infected patients on ARVs to be adherent. When non-adherence is then imposed on the patient through no fault of their own, this is very frustrating and alarming for patients,” she tells IPS.

Reducing the risks

Bekker believes the risks of an FDA stockout could be mitigated by accurately predicting the demand and ensuring adequate supply. While acknowledging this is easier said than done, she insists that strict supply management is the only way to ensure the success of the new FDA treatment regime.

“It is no mean feat to have started this large number of people on life-saving therapy and to then ensure they keep getting it for the rest of their lives. But we must do it and we must do it right.”

Rebe also stresses the importance of getting the FDA supply chain right and says the DoH’s initial plan looks promising.

“They seem to have been quite smart about it all, especially by introducing FDAs in phases: first for pregnant women, then patients on TB treatment, then those newly starting ARV treatment. Only once all these people are on FDAs will the others be moved over. This phased approach alone will go a long way in avoiding a stockout.”

Rebe points out that the DoH has also split the 2013/2014 FDA tender into multiple contracts. “This is good because if one supplier runs out the others should be able to pick up the shortfall,” he explains.

Joe Maila, DoH spokesperson, says bringing in additional suppliers would be considered only if the three current suppliers — Mylan, Cipla and Aspen — could not meet the demand.

Supply and demand is being monitored and managed at weekly meetings with both suppliers and provincial health authorities, he adds, enabling the department to “detect supply problems early and intervene.”

Importantly, Maila tells IPS, the department has stockpiled FDAs “as buffer stocks to alleviate shortages when these occur.”

Multiple benefits

The introduction of FDAs is also expected to significantly reduce the state’s annual bill for HIV/AIDS treatment.

The previous combination treatment cost around R120 (13.4 dollars) per person per month, whereas the cost of the new FDA is currently R93 (10.38 dollars) per month. With 1.9 million patients currently on state-funded ARV treatment, a saving of R27 (three dollars) per person per month is significant.

“The 2013 tender estimated that 30 million packs (of FDAs) will be purchased over two years, which will translate into an estimated saving of R810 million (90.5 million dollars),” Maila says.

Cost is just one of the many benefits of FDAs, which has convinced Rebe that the pros of this form of treatment far outweigh the cons.

“The three agents in the single-dose pills are the best we have right now…It’s also well proven that reducing the number of pills and the daily dosage is key to patients adhering to treatment regimens.”

A quick and easy single-dose pill is something Mbana is looking forward to when FDAs are eventually rolled out to her clinic in Masiphumelele. But for her, ensuring a steady supply of life-saving pills is more important than convenience.

“I don’t care if I have to take one tablet only one time a day or many tablets over the day, just as long as I have tablets to take.”

*First name changed on request