TOPLINE AstraZeneca on Tuesday announced its monoclonal antibody treatment for Covid-19 did not meet the primary goal of preventing symptoms in people who have been exposed to the coronavirus, denting hopes of a new therapeutic treatment for Covid-19 for unvaccinated people.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h3>



The antibody therapy, AZD7442, reduced the risk of developing symptomatic Covid-19 by only 33% among all exposed patients—including those who tested negative after exposure—compared to a placebo, which was deemed to be statistically insignificant, the company&nbsp;<a href="https://www.astrazeneca.com/content/astraz/media-centre/press-releases/2021/update-on-azd7442-storm-chaser-trial.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a>&nbsp;in a release.



The data was gathered from the company’s Phase III trials which were conducted on unvaccinated adults older than 18 years with confirmed exposure to a person with Covid-19 within the previous eight days.



The antibody therapy, however, was 92% effective in preventing symptomatic Covid-19 compared to the placebo in patients who tested negative after exposure, suggesting that the drug may be effective in preventing symptoms in people who are not already infected.



The drug continues to be tested as possible prophylaxis against Covid-19 in other trials, the company noted.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h3>



The trial’s principal investigator, Dr. Myron J. Levin, noted that the drug may be effective in preventing symptomatic Covid-19 in people who are not yet infected, adding: “While Covid-19 vaccination efforts have been successful, there is still a significant need for prevention and treatment options for certain populations, including those unable to be vaccinated or those who may have an inadequate response to vaccination.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h3>



AstraZeneca’s AZD7442 was developed with support from the U.S. government. In March, the company announced that it had inked a deal with the government to supply up to half a million doses of AZD7442 for $205 million—subject to the drug receiving emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The company said it is continuing to discuss its next steps with the U.S. government.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h3>



While several effective vaccines have been developed to protect against Covid-19, effective drugs against the disease remain sparse. Similar monoclonal antibody treatments developed by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly have been authorized for use in the U.S., but supplies of the drugs remain limited. The development of therapeutics that prevent symptomatic Covid-19 is critical to ending the pandemic as vaccines are yet to be accessible to large swathes of the world’s population.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h3>



<a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/astrazeneca-says-its-antibody-treatment-failed-in-preventing-covid-19-exposed-2021-06-15/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">AstraZeneca says its antibody treatment failed in preventing COVID-19 in exposed patients</a>&nbsp;(Reuters)



<a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/astrazeneca-azd7442-trial-for-prevention-of-symptomatic-covid-19-didn-t-meet-primary-goal-271623738254" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">AZD7442 Trial for Prevention of Symptomatic Covid-19 Didn&#8217;t Meet Primary Goal</a> (MarketWatch)



By Siladitya Ray, Forbes Staff

Kenya Vaccinates Elderly Against Covid-19

AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 Antibody Treatment Failed To Prevent Symptoms In Exposed Individuals

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Bio Burials And Life After Death

“Nothing can be said to be certain, except Death and Taxes” – Benjamin Franklin, 1789
As we head into the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), there is the possibility that only one of those will remain a certainty.
While taxes may morph from employee-contribution-for-state-resources, to a nominal amount on the gains of technology, to a Universal Basic Income (UBI) – death may yet be conquered.
An increasing number of futurists believe that death is a disease; and like any disease it can be cured. Perhaps the most prominent of these is Ray Kurzweil, Google’s chief futurist, with a prediction accuracy rate of 86% (115 of 147 since the 1990s). Kurzweil believes by 2029, we will see signs of living forever when we reach ‘Longevity Escape Velocity’ – the point at which every year we live, we extend our lifespan by at least another year.
The oldest verified living person, Chiyo Miyako, died at 117 years old in July. However, the number of centenarians is up 44% from 2000 to 2014. Improvements in vaccines, antibiotics, hygiene and sanitation are all contributing factors to increasing survival to advanced ages.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2018/09/06/you-only-live-twice/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: You Only Live Twice</a>
Coupled with affordable healthcare, food abundance, and a decrease in non-natural death causes (war, measles, diabetes), global life expectancy increased from 65.3 years in 1990 to 71.5 years in 2013.
The cost of sequencing the genome has decreased exponentially from approximately $150 million (2013) to under $1,000 (2015), a reduction of 150,000x. Once quantum computers become mainstream, the cost to sequence an individual genome could be cheaper than flushing the toilet! This could lead to mass customized medicines, further decreasing human mortality rate.
Additionally, the introduction of CRISPr allows scientists to cut out and replace living DNA; effectively eradicating almost all diseases and rewriting the genetic code that governs life expectancy.
And we haven’t even included advancements in nano-tech, AI to determine genetic diffusions, R&amp;D into reversing aging, 3D printing organs, or human augmentation to the point of ‘the singularity’.
With life expectancy of, say 200, versus today’s 75, there are a number of considerations. Many challenge the conventional paradigms we currently deem normal. Questions of increased retirement, education systems, second, third or even fourth careers, children and life-savings, are obvious short-term issues to address.
At a micro level, which individual wouldn&#8217;t want to spend just another year with a sick loved one? However, at a macro level, this would be far from ideal. Arguably, the greatest issue we face is resource constraints caused – not by over-population per se (the United Nations projects a world population of 9.7 billion by 2050) – but by the number of consumers and the scale/nature of that consumption.
Across Africa, the median age is 19.4 years with a total population of approximately 1.3 billion, however, the average age of the continental leadership is 65 years old. Already Africa has a history of dictatorships, and with leaders living longer, will we have more authoritarian rule?
With an increasingly aging active workforce, what is the future of jobs? Especially coupled with the replacement of labor with 4IR technologies (robotics, AI, automated plants) and youth unemployment upwards of 50%. From a capitalist perspective, efficiency gains and profit maximization will drive business decisions. However, are we further creating a situation whereby the Gini gap increases while the rich, aging, experienced reap the benefits of longevity? Are we sitting atop a socio-economic time bomb with increasing inequality?
Advances in technology will definitely drive the upward age of longevity toward the 200 mark. However, there are a number of considerations – both moral and social – that we have not begun to think about, as a species. Ultimately, the question is no longer if death (like taxes) is inevitable, but rather: even if we can conquer death – should we?
– By Craig Wing, a partner at FutureWorld International, driving innovation and futures thinking across organizations globally. He is a thought-leader on 4IR, future of work and corporate culture.

Men Trap

Even If We Conquer Death – Should We?

A hearse arrives at 6AM on a chilly Wednesday morning in Paulshof, a suburb in the north of Johannesburg; relatives weep as the coffin is carried into the house. At the gate is a red carpet and cars galore. This is no ordinary funeral. It’s the burial of Peter Zulu, the man famous for his son, Gugu Zulu, a racecar driver who died while climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.
There are hundreds here and they have come to mourn at vast expense.
This is one of nearly half a million funerals that happen every year in South Africa alone. The business of death is worth an estimated R9 billion ($700 million).
It is thriving but plagued by the lack of regulation and crookery.
“There’s a lot of fraud that’s going on within the funeral industry. People are registered dead but they are not certified dead,” says Johan Rousseau, Executive Chairman of the Funeral Industry Reformed Association.
There is no standard pricing.
“The industry value hasn’t been even determined by Statistics SA because they only look at a small percentage of funerals and their contribution to the GDP but how can they do that when they don’t have the database,” says Rousseau.
“Why do you have to pay R1,500 for a grave site in East London, in the Eastern Cape and pay R400 in Gauteng? It doesn’t make sense to me. The insurance industry is using that unregulated market to sell their products and services, because they don’t have interest rates, by employing a funeral parlour as an agent to do all the work for them. The insurance industry doesn’t invest back into the funeral parlours at all.”
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2017/02/01/mercy-or-monster/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Assisted Dying: Mercy Or Monster?</a>
Rousseau says they want to create regulations that would set a standard and bring in investments to grow the economy, create jobs and assist emerging parlours.
“There are 25,000 parlours in the country, now we have to think how we advance them. We have to look at the laws because it excludes some of these guys from entering the market because they are renting facilities,” he says.
Stockvels are also not regulated.
<h1>The Tears And Fears Of Staging Funerals</h1>
<div id="attachment_32756" style="width: 350px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32756" class=" wp-image-32756" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Morongwa-Broodie-201x300.jpg" alt="" width="340" height="508" />Morongwa Broodie (Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla)</div>
Morongwa Broodie is one of thousands of entrepreneurs across Africa making a living from people dying. Dealing with dead bodies and grieving families isn’t everybody’s idea of making money – it’s her daily bread.
It’s a two-hour drive to the Broodie Funeral Parlour in Soshanguve, a small township north of Pretoria. Outside is a fleet of cars, down the road: a salon; a repair shop; a school and hundreds roaming about not knowing that the people who will carry them to their final resting place are just around the corner.
For a woman who deals with mourners everyday Broodie appears wearing a charming smile as she welcomes us to her office, where, on the wall is a CCTV monitor watching all the rooms.
She talks with her hands; she leans into the table to make a point. Broodie appears professional, clinical and tough – probably what this business needs. This is the queen of the business of death on her throne.
Little in her fiefdom fazes her.
“You want to start with the interview or should we go see the bodies first?” she says pointing at the CCTV showing a worker busy with a body.
Every morning, at 8AM, it is Broodie’s job to check the bodies and her premises.
“We have a meeting where we discuss previous funerals and how we can improve the business. Then I come to my office, I read my book, I Declare by Joel Osteen, it’s got 31 promises, this book keeps me motivated and it’s very relevant to every situation of the day. I then check my emails and do whatever needs to be done before closing at 4:30PM,” says Broodie.
Broodie bought the business in 2013, after quitting her job as a teacher her husband told her about the parlour and persuaded her to buy.
“I never imagined myself working in a mortuary, but when I saw the business, I realized I could do it. I worked with the previous owner for three months before I took over completely.”
Broodie describes the first time she saw a dead body as scary.
“The first time I saw a corpse it was an old man who was in a casket ready to go home. He was just sleeping peacefully. I touched him, he was cold. I tried to wake him up but he was still; that’s when I realized that he was dead. On that night I had a nightmare like there was a big casket next to my bed. I screamed,” she says.
“After taking over the business, the first person I saw was from a government mortuary, it was a gentleman. When they opened his body bag, his legs were literally on his chest, and the guy who was preparing the body just took the legs and was like here are the legs. I was so frightened,” says Broodie.
It didn’t take long to adapt.
“I went to the fridge every day; sometimes I’d go in the morning to see what they are doing when they pick up a body from home or at hospital so that I can have an understanding of everything. We are lucky that we see these people dead but what about doctors who do surgical operations, sometimes patients come with intestines out. With us it&#8217;s different, everything is just still. Then you understand that there’s no more pain here,” she says.
For Broodie it’s the death of children that upsets her.
“I become affected the most when it&#8217;s children, because seeing a small body lying there vulnerable is devastating. With older people we kind of already know they cannot live long,” she says.
Through all the stress the business is booming. Last year, they made over R7 million ($540,000) and employ more than 30 people.
“The way people are dying these days, there’s no week that goes without burials. Just in Soshanguve we have more than 40 funeral parlours and every week we meet at the gravesite burying people,” says Broodie.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2015/11/01/prophets-of-profit/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Prophets Of Profit</a>
Broodie Funeral Parlour buries five to eight people a day. Their caskets cost up to R580,000 ($45,000).
“We have five-star packages; we do elite funerals and have a number of burials we do per day. If there are more funerals, we move them over to the next day.”
“Death is more expensive than living. Let me tell you that we can run a funeral of R110,000 in a four-roomed-house. The way people plan for death is so amazing; they even take policies, excluding the groceries and the catering. We also did cremation with an expensive casket of R90, 000 ($7,000).”
The job isn’t easy.
“Sometimes we’re delayed because families don’t pay on time. We organize funerals within four days; we must get the programs, clothes, etc. On the day of the funeral they tell us that they don’t have money or policies, only to find that they’ve bought new clothes and catering is there, but when it comes to paying us they come up with excuses. We don’t do a funeral if clients haven’t paid for services in full,” says Broodie.
“When families enter the gate, and pass my office, I’d see them crying, sometimes they come in groups hurt and confused, I also become so emotional. This is a business that needs emotions and we have to be with the families until the end and give them comfort.”
Broodie feels safer with dead bodies than people.
“I usually say to my employees that the people at the back are kings and queens, in this business we need to treat them well. Those who give us problems are human beings who can ruin everything,” she says.
“I do routine check-ups; the people working at the back can put a lot of bodies in the fridge that aren’t even my clients. They can give other funeral parlours space and I wouldn’t know it,” she says.
Broodie has survived the tears and fears of the hard-headed business of death; she is capitalizing and plans to turn her business into a franchise.
<h1>‘I Couldn’t Even Look At The Face, I Was Too Scared’</h1>
<div id="attachment_32757" style="width: 297px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32757" class=" wp-image-32757" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Charles-Khomo-201x300.jpg" alt="" width="287" height="428" />Charles Khomo (Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla)</div>
At the Broodie mortuary, we are welcomed by a man in a white coat who looks like a professor. His name is Charles Khomo and his game is death.
Khomo, a morgue officer, has been in the business of death for three years. Every day he collects bodies at crime scenes, hospitals and homes.
“When I get here, I have to wash it and put it in a fridge,” says Khomo.
“Every morning I have to check on the bodies and whether the temperature is still on 0 degrees, not 10 or 20. It has to be cold all the time so that bodies don’t rot and smell. If the body smells, I have to take it out, wash it with chemicals so that it can kill the smell and put it back in the fridge,” says Khomo.
“Sometimes bodies come in a bag and full of blood, I have to clean and rinse it before putting it in the fridge.”
On this day, inside the mortuary, it is cold and quiet except for the hum of a ceiling fan. I get this strange fear and so does the photographer. We prefer the land of the living.
Khomo is busy with a body that’s going to be buried the next day. “You want to see, come and see,” he says.
A man is lying in a casket as though he’s sleeping peacefully. It is a surprise how comfortable Khomo is, considering he spends his day with dead bodies.
“When I first started working here I was scared. I remember they wanted finger prints of the dead for a death certificate. I was given a stamp and I couldn’t even look at the face because I was too scared. There was a time when a body came in a bag and the person was in pieces, he was run over by a train. I had to open the body bag; I couldn’t even tell if it was a man or woman. I had to do it because this is what puts food on my table.”
Psychologists counsel the more than 30 staff who work here. The most important thing here is cleanliness – they have to wear gloves, overalls, big white boots and a mask. The fan has to be on at all times.
“My biggest challenge is picking up an overweight person from a four-roomed house alone,” he says.
Pain often comes with the job.
“Last year, it was tough when I lost my mother in September to diabetes, my niece died while giving birth, my uncle and cousin died from illness in December. All four of my family members were lying in that fridge, at the same time. I hated this place but then I asked myself, if I can’t do this job who’s going to do it?” he says, shaking his head.
Khomo opens the massive fridge with three bodies, neatly tucked in cream body bags, each with a tag on the left foot.
“The toe tags are very important to avoid confusion and mixing up the bodies. On these tags we write the name of the deceased, who picked them up, where we picked them up and contact numbers,” says Khomo.
Just another day in the morgue.
<h1>A Funeral App? From Coffin To Amen In 30 Minutes</h1>
<div id="attachment_32758" style="width: 643px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32758" class=" wp-image-32758" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Lebo-funerals-072-300x201.jpg" alt="" width="633" height="424" />Lebohang Khitsane (Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla)</div>
There is an app for everything these days. Now there is an app for funerals that takes you 30 minutes to arrange a burial.
This is the work of South African entrepreneur Lebohang Khitsane, CEO and founder of Bataung Memorials. The app was launched at the end of July. He named it The Jacob’s Bridge after his late father.
“It’s a portal where people can google funerals and coffins. It will lead them to our page which has a display of coffins and tombstones. We are also in partnership with different undertakers and we connect them with people depending on their preferences. We also connect people with clothing designers and psychologists,” says Khitsane.
“It is very convenient, they don’t have to go to mortuaries, we connect them with caterers, tents, decors, tombstones everything that has to do with a funeral. We want to save them time; people should spend more time mourning than running around searching for suppliers.”
It took Khitsane two years to build the app.
“A friend asked me to connect him with an undertaker that I know, I did. We did a checklist and managed to organize everything within 30 minutes, including tents, caterers, coffin. I said to myself this could be a lucrative business,” says Khitsane.
Entrepreneurship was always in Khitsane’s blood; his first business was a printing company, then he imported clothes from Germany. Khitsane was born and raised in Katlehong, a township east of Johannesburg; his father was a welder.
“I never thought I’d be in the business of death industry. My mother died when I was six and I hated going to the graveyard. But now I go there literally every day,” says Khitsane.
In 2004, Khitsane overcame his fear to found Bataung Memorials.
“The tombstones are characterized according to the personality of the deceased. If you are a musician your tombstone will have a stage and a microphone. A soccer player will have a pitch and a ball. Each and every stone has a story behind it.”
Khitsane’s work goes beyond the ordinary. He created a statue for former South African President Thabo Mbeki and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In 2013, he created a braille tombstone for blind people and a barcode epitaph.
“People wanted long messages written on a stone and it wasn’t always possible, so we created a QR code that can be placed on the tombstone. When you scan it with your tablet or phone it immediately takes you to the photos, history and videos of the deceased. You can also leave a message of condolence for the family,” says Khitsane.
At a time when many businesses are struggling, the business of death is flourishing. Bataung Memorial’s annual turnover is $3 million. Their tombstones can cost up to R1 million ($77,500). Clearly death is as expensive as living.
“At the moment we are working on a tombstone that cost R2.6 million ($200,000). It’s huge, four meters high; it’s sitting on a 16-square-meter space of the grave. Its weight can be 34 tons. The foundations and concrete work is over R400,000 ($31,000) because we need to put proper foundations, beams and steel.”
Bataung Memorial has made 15,000 tombstones for African families living as far as Australia, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Swaziland and Malawi.
His design of late South African actor Joe Mafela’s tombstone (a giant stone which is a portrayal of a lounge, with a TV and couch/sitting bench) was trending on social media, with many arguing over it.
As long as the deceased’s family is at peace, Khitsane is content. “It is a very sensitive business because we deal with emotional people and sometimes people tend to be unreasonable, but we have to redo the design until they are happy.”
(Photos by <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/author/tlhabi-monnakgotla/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Motlabana Monnakgotla</a>)

The Pain Of The Business Of Death

After cancer had spread throughout her body, and death was inevitable, Patricia Ferguson decided she wanted to be in control of it. So, she went on a hunger strike.
“She had always said she would rather take an overdose than become a burden,” says her son, Sean Davison.
Having flown from Cape Town, South Africa, to Dunedin, New Zealand, to be with his mother during her final days in 2006, Davison was confronted with a horrific scenario and a decision that is hard to comprehend.
Unable to move her limbs, Ferguson was bedridden. Bruises and bed sores covered her body and her flesh was starting to rot. She wished her pain would end and no longer wanted to be a burden on her loved ones. She had starved herself for more than a month but her body refused to give in.
Finally, she pleaded for her son to give her a lethal dose of morphine pills that she had saved up over days. Witnessing her suffering for weeks, Davison sorrowfully agreed to help his mother.
“My instinct was to keep her alive. But I realized that this was what she wanted, and if I didn’t help her she would have suffered a lot more,” he says.
He crushed the pills, mixed them in a glass of water, and handed it to his mother. After about an hour she peacefully fell asleep.
Davison says this was an act of compassion; New Zealand authorities said it was a crime. He was arrested and later sentenced to five months house arrest.
Helping his mother die seemed to split society. Although many sympathized with Davison – including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who wrote a letter that helped prevent him spending time behind bars – others were appalled by his actions. While being kept as a prisoner in his mother’s house, Davison received two death threats.
In 2010, while awaiting his trial, Davison, now the Head of the Forensic DNA Laboratory at the University of the Western Cape, founded Dignity SA. It is an organization that is fighting to legalize assisted dying in South Africa.
“My mother would never have gone on that ill-fated hunger strike if she knew she had the option of an assisted death,” Davison wrote in a column in December last year.
But, just like he faced resistance in New Zealand, Davison has detractors in South Africa. Dr Albu van Eeden is the CEO of Doctors For Life, a group of doctors that campaigns against controversial issues, such as euthanasia, abortion and homosexuality. He claims suicide is an infectious disease.
“The concept of suicide contagion is a very well established principle in psychology and psychiatry,” he says.
Suicide contagion is defined as the exposure to suicide or suicidal behaviors from family, friends, or media, and can result in an increase in suicidal behavior. Van Eeden believes that 99.9% of suffering can be effectively treated with medicine.
“It’s just erroneous now when we have the most effective pain treatment in the history of the world, now suddenly there is a need for assisted suicide,” he says.
Assisted suicide is when a doctor provides the medication and/or information for a terminally-ill patient to end their own life, while euthanasia involves a doctor administering the medication. Today, euthanasia is legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, Colombia, and Luxembourg. Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Canada, and in the US states of Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Vermont, Montana, and California.
In South Africa, assisted dying is illegal but some are trying to change that in courts and Parliament. The most recent case is that of the well-known advocate Robin Stransham-Ford, who insisted his cancer and kidney failure infringed on his constitutional right to dignity. In 2015, on the day Stransham-Ford succumbed to the cancer‚ the High Court ruled that a doctor could help him end his life. Numerous organizations, including the Department of Justice, the Department of Health, and Doctors For Life, asked the Supreme Court of Appeal to review this. In December 2016, the decision was overturned.
Aubrey Magerman, Attorney and Director at Magerman Attorneys, feels that assisted dying should be legalized; he says it is still a crime in South Africa.
“We’re back at square one, where we would be criminally culpable to assist someone in ending their life,” he says.
Magerman believes everyone should have a constitutional right to a dignified life and a dignified death.
“I have had my own grandparents pass away out in the rural Northern Cape under terrible circumstances, with no assistance, and in horrible pain, and being unrecognizable for weeks on end. It is terribly traumatizing for anybody. I wish, when it come to my time [to die], I will have the opportunity [to undergo assisted suicide].”
Magerman refers to the popular MP Mario Oriani-Ambrosini, who had stage-four lung cancer.
“One day he couldn’t take the pain anymore and he killed himself. His family found him with his brain and blood splattered all over the bedroom walls and on the bedding. So, I don’t think the State should tell us how to die,” he says.
Despite this, Van Eeden says assisted dying can have consequences beyond easing a person’s suffering.
“Once you allow it you are stretching man’s tendency to stretch the limit or the borders which makes the slippery slope happen,” he says.
“In Canada, they now want to make it possible for people who are asking for euthanasia to donate their organs. Suicide was originally only meant for terminal illness, for people with unbearable suffering, until they said ‘on what basis is physical suffering worse than mental suffering?’ So then they said ‘ok, we’ll allow it for mental suffering as well’.”
“So now you find a person can go to their doctor and say ‘I’m depressed, I’m worthless’. Maybe he’s a disabled person or an old person, and he says I don’t mean anything for anybody, I’m a burden to society, to my children, I think I’m in the way. I want to rather commit suicide and please you’re the doctor, you must do it for me. Now they can say to him, ‘You know what? Your life is worthless but it can have purpose, you can give your organs for donation&#8230; And this just shows you what a monster suicide becomes.”
Van Eeden is also worried about the regulation of the laws.
“Holland was not able to keep its regulations. Firstly, they said there would be a waiting time, and two or three doctors must agree with the decision, but all these things went out the door. Initially, it was only for patients above the age of 18, now it’s changed so that children above the age of 12 years old can ask for euthanasia without the consent of parents. The limits are constantly being stretched,” he says.
Magerman agrees that regulation is vital if assisted dying laws are introduced.
“What is required here is for the State to step in. It should be up to Parliament, which is the body charged with making legislation. It is not something that can be regulated in the courts.
“It creates absolute uncertainty. It is simply for Parliament to say we will for now on regulate assisted suicide or euthanasia and the parameters of that will be set.”
But Van Eeden has concern that State regulation opens the door for laws to be abused.
“It will always be cheaper to take a life than to treat a person and try and help him. So there’s a very strong financial incentive to any government once you start allowing assisted suicide.”
It’s a complex issue with many legal, ethical and religious variables to consider. Those against assisted dying say that it goes against the sanctity of life that is stressed by most religions.
One iconic religious leader defies this. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in October 2016, said he would like to have the option of assisted dying.
“I have prepared for my death and have made it clear that I do not wish to be kept alive at all costs. I hope I am treated with compassion and allowed to pass on to the next phase of life’s journey in the manner of my choice,” he wrote in the Washington Post.
“For those suffering unbearably and coming to the end of their lives, merely knowing that an assisted death is open to them can provide immeasurable comfort,” he added.
In 1998, South Africa’s President Nelson Mandela asked the Law Reform Commission to look into assisted dying.
The commission decided that assisted dying should be legalized, even writing a draft bill. Despite this, it was never debated in Parliament, and continues to gather dust.
In 2014, Tutu lambasted the way Mandela was used as a political prop days before his death, calling it ‘disgraceful’.
“My friend was no longer himself. It was an affront to Madiba’s dignity,” wrote Tutu, who is often referred to as South Africa’s moral conscience.
Would assisted dying legislation have allowed Mandela to die with more dignity? It’s impossible to answer definitively, but a sobering thought nonetheless.

shutterstock_552442546

Mercy Or Monster?

With South Africa in the midst of its worst drought in more than two decades, a trip through the Kruger National Park is dusty and desolate. Areas of the park that were once lush are now withered; the watering holes are now cracked earth.
Driving through the park is like following a trail of death, with the sour smell of decomposing flesh. There are as many sightings of skulls and bones as there are herds of the park’s most abundant antelope, the impala.
It’s not as grim as it seems though. Izak Smit, a Systems Ecology scientist in the Kruger National Park, one of Africa’s largest nature reserves, says it helps the park’s ecosystem.
“These droughts have a natural regulatory role to play,” says Smit.
The current buffalo population is at its highest since the numbers were first counted in the 1960s, he says.
“The buffalo numbers can’t continue to increase forever. The numbers go up and then they go down. In wet years, people think the animals are doing great but some species suffer, like the predators, they find it harder to catch prey,” he says.
The lack of water also brings an evolutionary theory into play – the survival of the fittest.
“Your older individuals, your young individuals and the sickly individuals are the ones that are most affected. The healthier and stronger animals will survive longer. The animals that are the strongest will be able to best survive and they will carry the gene pool forward.”
Some animals seem to be thriving in the tough conditions. Vultures flock throughout the park, squabbling over the plentiful carcasses. The crocodiles that have managed to secure the few remaining pools in the Sabie River also seem gorged. A dead buffalo, floating in the water, was ignored by three of the red-toothed reptiles that were within meters of an easy meal.
As 100-meter-tall dust devils twist their way across the arid land, the animals jostle for shade under large trees that haven’t lost their leaves yet. At a lookout point at Mlondozi Dam, near the border with Mozambique, the riverbed was empty and the dam wall was exposed over the parched soil. Nearby, three hippos crammed in shallow water, which would probably dry up in a few days. With no other water sources nearby, the hippos were facing death.
Some have called for human intervention, saying the natural effects of the drought are felt more by the animals because of the unnatural barriers in their way – fences.
“We monitor the situation but there is very little intervention that can and should be done. We’re trying to manage for a healthy ecosystem, not for healthy animals. With the size of the park, interventions will be small-scale and might not achieve the desired effect. We need to allow nature to take its course,” says Smit.
The drought is the most severe South Africa has experienced since 1991/1992 and it could get worse.
“We are now in a dryer period compared to 1991 and 1992, so it seems that this drought is more severe than the previous one,” he says.
Smit says you can’t predict how long it will take for the area to recover.
“We’ll have to see how it plays out.”
The animals in the Kruger National Park hope its sooner rather than later.

Drought animal

‘We Need To Allow Nature To Take Its Course’

The people here call it Mpumalanga – the place where the sun rises. Every morning when the light grips Louisville, 40 kilometers from Barberton, December Mazibuko and Jabulile Nyarende, wake up to another day in hell.
For weeks, they prayed for Yvonne Mnisi, Pretty Nkambule and Solomon Nyarende – three of their family trapped in a steel container, 80 meters underground after a crown pillar collapsed at the open pit gold mine, Lily Mine, on February 5.
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Nkambule’s family lives in a house made of mud in Louisville, 20 minutes away from Lily Mine. Her husband, Mazibuko, sits on a small bench, cradling their seven-month-old daughter and five-year-old son. There is the agony of hope and despair in their eyes.
“This haunts me every day, I can’t even begin to explain the pain I’m feeling right now. If they come out alive I would be grateful, but at this point we are ready to accept any news. Even if they are dead we want their bodies, because we want closure,” says Mazibuko, who also works at Lily Mine.
The three missing workers are all breadwinners. Mazibuko will have to raise four children alone.
“I am so heartbroken, if I could go down and rescue them myself, I would. Whenever I look at my sister’s husband and children my heart tears into pieces. Everything has been done, but still nothing,” says Nkambule’s older sister, Phindile Nkambule.
As the drills bore away at the mine, families of the trapped believed more could be done.
“The situation is painful, because they are taking a long time to get those people out. I believe that the management is not doing enough to rescue them. They should look at other means of getting the three out,” says Mazibuko.
“A ritual is done at all mines, but it has never been done here. There were signs that something like this would happen. People have been hurt countless times in that mine and we’ve been telling the managers to do a ritual, but they keep refusing… all they care about is making money.”
On the day of the tragedy, 115 people clocked in for work and nearly all were rescued.
The three missing were working in a steel container, used as a lamp room, which crashed down a sink hole.
Jabulile Nyarende, Solomon’s aunt, remains hopeful that her nephew will come out alive.
“What is frustrating me the most is that Solomon used to take care of his mother who is mentally ill. Who is going to take care of her now? But, I serve a living God and I believe that in this situation, he would never forsake us,” she says.
Three collapses delayed the rescue. One saw a large part of a hill fall into the hole where the container was. The rescue team suffered another setback when a drill broke.
“A rescue mission has begun, and the plan is to drill a hole 800 meters away from the sinkhole,” says Mike Begg, Operations Director at Lily Mine, at the gates of the mine on February 23.
The drilling will take three weeks to be completed.
This disaster came days after the South African Chamber of Mines celebrated the lowest fatalities in the history of mining.
In 2015, it was reported that 77 mineworkers died underground, the lowest number on record.
“South African mines are failing dismally to comply with the safety rules and regulations of mines… It’s a really sad situation,” says Jeff Mphahlele, Secretary General of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu).
“We are concerned about the safety of mines in this country because this is the third incident to happen in three months,” says Sahlulele Luzipho, Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Mineral Resources.
“We need to find a way to tighten up the rules where safety compliance is concerned.”
So do the families of the three missing mineworkers of Lily Mine.

The anguish Of Those left behind

A family man, who stood up for what he believed in, paid with his life. In the coalmining town of Dundee, situated in a valley of the Biggarsberg mountains, in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province, it is one of the many sad, yet largely unsung, stories of whistleblowing in Africa.
Blowing the whistle is a tough game in 21st-century Africa, but, it’s as important as ever in a world of more and more dirty secrets. In many parts of the world, whistleblowers have become household names,  such as Chelsea Manning, after disclosing sensitive military and diplomatic documents, and Edward Snowden after he leaked classified information from the National Security Agency. In Africa, online warrior Baba Jukwa, who leaked sensitive information about Zimbabwe’s ruling party Zanu-PF; and Kenya’s John Githongo, who embarrassed the powerful with his book It’s Our Turn To Eat, are far from lauded.
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Sadly, many whistleblowers in Africa are ruined or die unsung. They are shunned, harassed, jailed and left jobless.
In the small town of Umzinyathi District in KZN, South Africa, whistleblowing ended with a bullet. Grishen Bujram, from Dundee, was respected and hardworking. He had been an activist since he was 15 and a councillor. One day, he found that free houses for the poor were being sold for profit. South Africa has built millions of the so-called Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) houses, putting a roof over millions of heads.
Bujram was outraged and alleged the mayor of the African National Congress (ANC)-controlled Endumeni municipality, Thandeka Nukani, had sold 17 RDP houses and also taken one for herself; even though she had a well-paid job.
Bujram confronted the mayor and reported it to the council. On June 15, 2007, he was allegedly called for a meeting. His widow, Shirley Bujram, kissed him goodbye at the door at 6:30PM, unaware it was the last time she would see him alive.
“I was home with my children and I heard someone pounding at the door. When I went to the kitchen it was dark but I could see the police blue lights. I assumed my husband went and smashed someone or something else had happened. When I opened the door I saw the police and his nephew there. I said to the nephew, ‘if your uncle is in trouble I will leave him in jail till the end of the weekend,’” says Shirley.
The men in blue asked Shirley to sit down as they delivered the news. They said Bujram had been shot many times at the wheel in a township near Dundee.
“He was like a father to all of us in the community,” says resident Muzikayifani Khumalo – eight years later.
Another resident Thando Dube* says, “The thing that ended his life was his hatred for corruption. People like Bujram are the people who die for telling the truth. In this district, we are scared to talk because we are face to face with the gun. This place is corrupt but if you speak up you die.”
In the days after the death, Nukani, according to Shirley, visited the family to pass her condolences.
“Her exact words were ‘your husband’s killers must rot in jail’ which is shocking because she had previously sent me messages saying my husband is interfering with her work and has a jealous syndrome. If he continues on his path against her, he will be sorry,” she says.
According to the widow, a woman who was with Bujram, minutes before the assassination, testified in court that Bujram knew he was being followed by the mayor’s car, but thought nothing of it. Two brothers, on their way home from work; witnessed the mayor’s boyfriend, Bongani Shangase, shoot Bujram and her nephew, Siyabonga Nukani, used the car as a getaway vehicle.
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This breakthrough gave way to disappointment for the Bujram family. They say Dundee police had the case for three months but no arrest was made until the widow went to the organized crime unit.
Police arrested Nukani, but charges were dropped for insufficient evidence. Detectives arrested Shangase and Siyabonga Nukani. Shangase received a life sentence; Siyabonga turned state witness and got 20 years.
“Thandeka planned to have her nephew poisoned because he had turned state witness. Her boyfriend worked with other inmates to make this happen but the inmates couldn’t go through with it,” says Shirley.
There were charges for the attempted murder of Siyabonga Nukani, against Thandeka Nukani. They were withdrawn, in 2011, due to insufficient evidence.
Shirley Bujram and the police, with Siyabonga Nukani’s cooperation, also found there was a hitman, Mzamo Majola.
“I found out that when [Bujram] was killed it was the third attempt which became successful. The hitman had tried two times before. On the day Bujram was killed, Mzamo Majola couldn’t go ahead with it because there were people around. Shangase got agitated and killed my husband himself,” she says.
The police offered Majola a deal to turn state witness. Based on his evidence, police arrested Thandeka Nukani again.
In August last year, Judge Isaac Nkosi withdrew the Bujram murder charges against Thandeka Nukani after Majola went on the run.
For the second time, the former mayor walked free.
Thandeka Nukani has been redeployed as the personal assistant to Umzinyathi District mayor, James Mthethwa. She lost her mayoral seat after it was found R100,000 ($7,410) in legal fees, for the Bujram case, were allegedly paid for by the ANC.
Thandeka Nukani did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Nearly eight years on, Bujram’s comrades carry whistleblowing forward at equal risk. Mzwakhe Sithebe and Yussuf Kader are fellow activists who fight corruption in KZN and are often ridiculed for doing so.
“During the apartheid era we were fighting for justice together with Grishen Bujram. Now, in a democratic country, we are still faced with the same tendencies. The problem is people driven by greed,” says Sithebe.
“The problem is that politicians have been elevated and are like a law [unto] themselves. We will always fight for justice. The issue of being eliminated unfortunately is the fate for all of us who stand against corruption. We will raise questions that need to be raised irrespective of who will be offended and decide to kill us. We have lost a number of whistleblowers in this area. We need some kind of system that protects people willing to come forward with sensitive information.”
Kader, a businessman who now drives a bulletproof car, says whistleblowers risk their lives for the good of the country.
“Houses of the poorest of the poor are being taken by those in power. Some RDP houses get sold and there is a lot of inside corruption which we continue to fight against,” says Kader.
Because of the corruption, Kader has written a letter demanding the dismissal of five government employees.
“As it stands, I can be killed at any time but I am not afraid to die for the poorest of the poor.”
Endumeni Municipality’s Mayor Thulani Mahaye, the successor to Mayor Nukani, encourages people to come forward with any information that exposes irregularities.
“I am proud of the police and the community right now. They are working together to make this area safer and ensure arrests are made when a crime is committed. If someone needs to blow the whistle and they are afraid of being eliminated, they can secretly come forward and protection will be given to them,” he says.
Despite this, controversy over houses, that saw the death of Bujram, rumbles on.
A five-minute drive outside Dundee lies the small town of Glencoe. Its residents are up in arms against the municipality. They allege 71 names, for RDP houses, in Glencoe’s Sithembile Phase 2 projects, have been removed from the list.
“It is unclear how so many people lost houses they had applied, and had been approved, for. It can only be corruption. People’s names are disappearing from the list or being withdrawn without reason. For some people, untrue claims of application withdrawals are even made,” says Glencoe resident Sifiso Madi.
“An RDP house that I applied for was approved but when the houses were built they said I withdrew my application which I never did. They also said that they looked for me to come and sign documents but didn’t find me. This is not true because no one ever contacted me or my next of kin, sent a letter or came to where I stay to look for me,” says one Dundee woman who wants to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.
Another frustrated resident says “my cousin died in 2008 but an RDP house had been approved for him. He left dependants, so in 2013 when the houses were being built I decided to check on the progress to make sure his children have a place to stay. Funnily enough, they gave me a list that says my cousin withdrew the application. How is that possible when he is dead? Did he wake up from his grave to withdraw it? I asked the human settlement people to show me where my cousin signed to withdraw his application for the house he had already been approved for, but obviously, because it never happened, they were not able to provide any proof.”
Many who rocked the boat like Bujram also paid with their lives.
In June, just 55 kilometers from Dundee, Vusi Ntombela, an Nquthu Municipality council speaker for the ANC, and teacher and deputy principal at Luvisi Primary School, was gunned down while teaching a Grade 6 class. A gunman walked into his classroom and shot him four times. Two pupils were caught in the crossfire. Thirteen-year-old Elizabeth Nhleko died from a stray bullet.
The widow, Thembelihle Ntombela, told journalists she believes Vusi was killed because of tensions within the ANC. In December last year, Vusi had resisted an instruction from the ANC sub-region to resign as speaker. His murder is allegedly related to political tensions in the governing party’s Inkosi Bhambatha region and in the council itself.
Police arrested Mbhekiseni Khambule and Sibongiseni Mdakane for the murder. Khambule is the bodyguard of Nquthu mayor, Emily Molefe. Mdakane was later sentenced to life imprisonment. He confessed that he had been promised R15,000 (around $1,100) for the hit by his co-accused.
In May 2008, Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) councillor Peter Nxele was shot dead in his driveway for speaking out against corruption just a week after raising questions about R50,000 ($3,700) that had gone missing from a council business grant. He also requested a forensic audit into the spending of the Endumeni municipality. One of the five men accused of gunning down Nxele is Bongani Shangase, the same man who killed Bujram.
In June 2009, 124 kilometers from Dundee where Bujram was killed, Tony Malunga, an ANC councillor and regional executive committee member, was gunned down at his home in Greytown. He was allegedly killed because of his fight against corruption. Malunga was found lying in a pool of blood outside the ANC offices.
Back in Dundee, Shirley Bujram vows to fight for justice for her husband’s murder.
“My husband was diabetic but a month before he died he said to me he was not going to be killed by diabetes because there is a bullet there for him; and by the bullet he died.”

“If You Speak Up You Die”

For many Kenyans, Thursday April 2 was meant to be a beautiful day. As with the Christian traditions, many of the Garissa University students were preparing for the long weekend. The Easter holidays would give them an opportunity to relax, away from the long hours in class. This was not to be. In the early hours of that fateful day, gunfire rang out. What followed was a near 15-hour siege – a massacre that left 147 people dead.
Hours into the attack, the Islamic insurgents, Al Shabaab, claimed responsibility.
Most of the dead were students, described by government officials and families as ‘the hope of our country’. Five service men too succumbed. Kenyan officials say four of the attackers were killed, while five Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) soldiers lost their lives. Six other suspects have been charged in court with the killings.
Tales from the survivors are chilling.
Cynthia Cherotich hid in her room as the militants swept through the corridors of the university.
“I had to drink body lotion to survive. I was thirsty,” she says.
“It was a terrible experience. We hid in the closet the entire period until we heard voices we thought were from the Kenya Defence Forces,” says another student, Mary Njeri.
“Still, we were not sure. So I asked my roommates, who we were hiding with, whether to go out and die or stay in the closet and still die there. She told me that if it was our day to die, we would rather die outside. When we got out, it was about 2.30PM. We met the KDF and they rescued us,” she says.
The students say there was a power failure the previous night. They thought the initial gun shots was the sound of an electrical fault. Soon after, the screams of the dying echoed throughout the building.
The attack, police investigations reveal, was planned well in advance with the help of some of the university’s non-teaching staff. Mohammed Abdirahim Abdullahi, the mastermind behind the attack, was a University of Nairobi law graduate and the son of a government chief from Mandera.
At the Chiromo Mortuary in Nairobi, where parents identified and collected bodies of their loved ones, grief filled every breath. They blame the Islamist militants and the Kenyan government.
The rescue mission for the students has been described as bungled. For close to 15 hours, the insurgents roamed the corridors of the institution. They herded the students in rooms and shot them.
Survivors had to answer questions about Islamic teachings to stay alive. Most of those killed were Christians.
An elite squad of the Kenyan police force joined late in the day and in less than half an hour, the siege was over. Interestingly, the cabinet secretary in charge of internal security and inspector general of police arrived at the scene hours before the elite squad.
The squad based in Nairobi arrived aboard two fixed-wing aircraft, while part of the contingent travelled 390 kilometers by road to the college. One of the police planes that should have been used for the rescue operation was in the coastal city of Mombasa to pick up a daughter in law of one of the police commandants.
This has led to the government taking some of the blame.
“Institutions of learning should be the safest place for our children. Now where do they turn to? Our government should have done better. All these lives could not have been lost if they acted on the intelligence,” says a family member of a student that was killed.
Five days before the Garissa attack, several alerts of possible Al Shabaab attacks in the country had been issued by embassies. On the eve of the attack, at the Diaspora Investment Conference in Nairobi, President Uhuru Kenyatta dismissed the warnings and accused the embassies of economic sabotage.
“I have not heard the British issue travel advisories against other European capitals,” said Kenyatta. “We want to send a clear message that they will not intimidate us with these threats.”
In the face of the attack, Kenyatta cut a figure of a head of state in charge. Addressing the nation, the president ordered for the training of 10,000 service men and women whose recruitment was challenged in court. He said he would take responsibility. One week later, the executive order was rescinded and a fresh recruitment ordered.
Tellingly, in March, a number of Kenyan universities had put their students on high alert for a possible terror attack. The notices urged students to be vigilant within the institutions and co-operate with security agents regarding any suspicions.
The Garissa attack is the second deadliest terror attack on Kenyan soil. In 1998, the United States Embassy in Nairobi was bombed, killing over 200 people. The bombings were claimed by the then Osama bin Laden-led Al Qaeda terror group. The attack at Westgate Mall in 2013 resulted in the death of 67 people. In between, however, there have been several Al Shabaab-linked attacks on Kenyan soil.
Al Shabaab claims the attacks, and abduction of tourists along the Kenyan coastline, are retaliation for the KDF crossing the border into Somalia. Victims are told that Kenya will not know peace until its troops are withdrawn.
“We need to withdraw the troops from Somalia and have them pitch camp in the vicinity of the Wajir region [near the Somalian border]. Let them set up a combat base there,” says Andrew Frankline, Managing Director of Small Wars Advisory Services.
However, the government insists that the withdrawal of troops is as good as surrender.
Since October 2011, data indicate that Kenya has been attacked by Al Shaabab, or militants affiliated to it, more than 135 times. This translates to at least nine attacks every month. Government agencies report that it has resulted in over 400 deaths and over 1,000 injuries.
The attacks continue to ruin Kenya’s tourism industry.
“When we thought it could not get any worse it did. Tourism is suffering, it has been tough,” says Agatha Juma, Chief Executive Officer of Kenya Tourism Federation.
It might be a while before Kenya, and its economy, recovers.

‘If It Was Our Day To Die, We Would Rather Die Outside’

December is the month we celebrate, give gifts, and restore joy to the world regardless of religious beliefs. This year, for the first time, we will remind ourselves of Nelson Mandela, as the anniversary of his death is recalled.
He taught us much about reconciliation. But my memories of him are always infused with his laughter, his sense of fun, his delicious wit, his ability to make light of serious matters thereby bringing them into human perspective.
Most times it would start with a phone call.
“Hello Peter,” that familiar voice would boom, “how are you today?”
While always joyful to get the call, behind the happy emotion was one of trepidation: what does the old man want from me?
Bill Clinton once said – after Mandela had introduced him as one of the best politicians in the world from whom he could learn a lot of tricks – that South Africans didn’t know how lucky they were.
“Mr Mandela is a pretty good and tricky politician himself,” Clinton said with a chuckle.
“When he calls and says ‘Mr President’ I know there is a matter of State to discuss. But if he says ‘Hello Bill, how are you?’ I know this call is going to cost the United States a billion dollars.”
It sounds like bragging to say he called me often. But he did, because of my job as editor of The Star. His relationship with the media was excellent, friendly, courteous, never demanding, always suggesting.
And he did like to see his picture in the paper. At the end of one year, I presented him with a framed poster ‘page one’ made from all the times his photograph had been on the front page: 27 times in that year, making him our favorite pin-up.
Yet he still complained that we were not giving him and his political party, the ANC, the space they deserved.
“If I put a picture of you on every page, you would still want more. You politicians are all the same,” I grumbled.
“Not on the back page,” he said. “I don’t want to be with losing teams.”
He called to invite me to breakfast and I had my children with me so asked if they could come, naturally he agreed.
When he heard I had named my daughter after Helen Suzman, he told my Helen, then seven, that he hoped she would be a fighter like Suzman.
“I want to be a vet,” said my Helen matter-of-factly.
“Well, I have some cows in Qunu,” he said, “will you come look after them when I have retired to the hills?”
“I don’t think so,” said Helen, undiplomatically.
Once inside his Houghton home I told my two daughters to please play outside.
“Let them stay,” he said.
“No, they will break some Ming vase or other irreplaceable gift, they can play outside,” I said.
“I am the president, you can stay,” he told them.
“I’m your father, leave and play outside.”
“Tell your father I am also his President and am instructing him to let you stay…”
They stayed, and my youngest daughter, Julia, wandered about the sitting room touching everything as I kept a beady and rather anxious eye on her.
Halfway through our intense political discussion, she stood behind him, tugged his head backwards and kissed him on his forehead.
Astonished, he asked: “What was that for?”
She shrugged her six-year-old shoulders and said: “You looked sad and grumpy. I thought you needed a kiss.”
He loved Julia forever after. When he spotted me at functions he would call out “How’s Julia?” as his greeting.

The Day A Sad And Grumpy Mandela  Needed A Kiss

This calm encounter on a spring morning in Sandton, Johannesburg, belies a man who forged his career amid fury. He cheated death at the hands of police to capture the Soweto school uprising, surely, one of the saddest stories ever told in Africa.
On June 16, 1976, Sam Nzima, a photojournalist at The World newspaper, in Johannesburg, took a picture of Mbuyisa Makhubo carrying a 13-year-old dying Hector Pieterson from the Soweto massacre. He smuggled the film out in his sock and the picture hit the front pages of the world. The police wanted to destroy it – the image destroyed Nzima’s career.
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The picture changed the political landscape of South Africa; it made a fortune for the news agencies of the world, but he got nothing from it for 22 years.  The iconic image has been on everything from billboards to T-shirts.
“The picture of Hector Pieterson destroyed my future in journalism. I couldn’t continue as a journalist because of that picture and I would never put my life in danger, I was forced to leave everything behind,” says Nzima.
Harassment from police forced Nzima to become a small bottle store owner in the small village Lilydale, in Bushbuckridge, in Mpumalanga. It took him 22 years of struggle to get his copyright back.
“The copyright of the Hector Pieterson Photo was given to me on the November 16, 1998 by Independent Newspapers Holdings Limited and was registered with Webber Wentzel Bowens Attorneys Notaries &amp; Conveyancers intellectual property lawyers in Johannesburg on July 20, 2000,” he says.
The day he risked his life for the picture is as clear as yesterday.
“As early as 6AM in the morning of June 16, I was covering a student march in Naledi High in Soweto with a colleague Sophie Tema. We found the students busy writing placards opposing new Bantu education laws. This followed a circular sent to the schools that Afrikaans will be the medium of instruction,” says Nzima.
When the march reached Morris Isaacson High, a student leader Tsietsi Mashinini addressed students from the top of a tree saying the march was to be a peaceful, says Nzima. Shortly after, armed police arrived in armoured vehicles and instructed all to disperse. The children sang Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika in defiance.
Nzima says the singing agitated a police commander who instructed his officers to open fire. The students ran and Nzima hid in a house.
“I got out from the house, the police had ceased firing, and I saw a little child falling down. There comes this tall boy Mbuyisa and picked him up. As Mbuyisa picked him up, I went with my camera. I was also shooting with my camera, under the shower of police bullets. Mbuyisa was running to the nearest car, the nearest press car was our Volkswagen Beetle. I managed to shoot six sequences of him carrying Hector. My colleague Sophie Tema opened the door and they put Hector inside. Hector was certified dead upon arriving in Phefeni Clinic,” says Nzima.
“I knew the police would come back for me, I wound the film and stashed it in my sock and then loaded another film. As I anticipated, the police came back and grabbed me after they ran away for some few minutes. They took my three cameras and exposed my films. When they thought they had destroyed the evidence, our driver Thomas Khoza rushed the film to The World office. The picture was published the next day.”
Nzima’s gallant work with his camera on that violent winter day in 1976 was to wreck his life. When police came knocking on his door, Nzima left his job in Johannesburg and ended up under house arrest in the remote town of Bushbuckridge, far from his family in Soweto.
“After two days I received a call from the station commander at John Vorster Square, he wanted to have a cup of coffee with me. Percy Qoboza was my editor at The World. He advised me to stay away from the police if I don’t want to come back as corpse.”
Qoboza told the commander to invite him, the editor, for tea instead. This led to a police instruction to shoot Nzima if they found him photographing, a police insider told him at the time.
In April 2011, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma awarded Nzima with the Order of Ikhamanga for excellence in liberal art.
“If popularity was cash, I was going to tell you I am a millionaire or billionaire. Many people know this picture but some don’t know the man behind it. I was shocked in 2010 when I was invited in Berlin at a school called Hector Pieterson Schule. The school was renamed in celebration of the fall of The Berlin Wall. Germans compared their freedom to the South African independence.”
“Money was not that much, no rewards in cash but I had recognition from the state president. At the beginning I regretted [taking] this picture because this picture destroyed my journalistic career, I lost my job and my friends in Johannesburg. But now I am rejoicing because I am getting high publicity, I have become an icon in South Africa. Maybe one day I will reap a jackpot from some quarters.”
A Sam Nzima Foundation will be opened, including a school for photojournalists, in his hometown near Bushbuckridge. This is where Nzima has a makeshift darkroom that he uses to train school children in his village of Lilydale.
“After the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990, I was brave enough to pick up my camera and continue where I left, but all these years I was afraid to do that. The original camera that captured Hector Pieterson is still intact; I have kept it safe in those years.”
When Hillary Clinton visited South Africa for the first time, in the 1990s, she wanted to see Nzima at the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto. She offered to buy the camera, but Winnie Mandela advised Nzima against selling. She said it was the property of the state. Nzima also refused to donate his Pantex camera, with 50mm lens, to the ANC Women’s League.
“I was happy not to sell it, but if it was good money she was offering, I would have been happier to sell. It’s because it’s better enjoying my life when I can than keeping the camera. One day, I will show people of South Africa that this is a camera that brought their freedom. But the person who struggled for freedom gets nothing.”
“South Africans do not value me but I do get recognition from other countries. I remember in 2011 I was invited to exhibit my work in Belgium and address the parliament in Brussels. Parliamentarians showed interest in our history and the role I played in those days.”
Despite Nzima receiving lucrative offers from overseas for the camera, he says his conscience disapproves. It lives in his museum in Bushbuckridge.
“Now I cannot sell the camera, it has become the property of the state, it is our heritage. I have to consult with the politicians for a go-ahead; otherwise I will be frustrated again. If the government officials could learn that I had sold the camera overseas, they will ask me why I did it.”
Hector Pieterson was buried at Avalon Cemetery, in Soweto, and a museum in his memory was built near where he was shot, in 2002. His sister, Antoinette Sithole, the girl running alongside, is a curator at the museum and Makhubo was last traced in Nigeria. He went to exile after the photograph was published.
Every year on June 16, Nzima kneels and prays for the fallen schoolchildren of Soweto. He escaped with his life from the terrible day but his career didn’t.

The Sad Story Behind  The Picture That  Moved The World To Tears

The night Private Johan Botha died was actually meant to be his last on active service in Afghanistan’s turbulent Helmand province. His battalion, A (Grenadier) Company, was making its way out of the province on orders to push Taliban insurgent forces towards Pakistan. In the morning, another unit, the Grenadier Guards, would take over, allowing Botha and his company to head north to Camp Bastion, the main British base in Helmand, where they would catch the next flight home.
But a midnight ambush changed all that. It was like World War One; A Company was dug into a trench, and a few meters away, on the other side of no man’s land, was the Taliban.
In the darkness, machine gun fire shattered the silence as Taliban fighters launched their attack firing rocket-propelled grenades. The bursts of sand and smoke blinded and trapped the British. Seven men bore the brunt. Botha was one of them. He was wounded but no one could find him. His last words came across another soldier’s radio. He was shouting through the chaos in his heavy Afrikaans accent: “Boss, please don’t leave me.”
Botha was 25 and left a wife and young daughter.
Botha, of the Mercian Regiment (Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters), was a South African, one of thousands of Africans fighting for the British. He enlisted in Pretoria, as a Commonwealth soldier, in 2005; his tour of duty in Helmand was his first and he carried it out while a South African citizen.
British soldiers from Africa are not new. Infantrymen like Botha have been fighting under the Union Flag for hundreds of years. The two World Wars saw British dominions, like South Africa and Canada, raising their own armies, under British command, fully integrated into the British fighting forces. In World War One, more than 74,000 South Africans fought for the Queen and someone else&#8217;s country.
They are fewer today; about 660 British soldiers are South African – among the African majority of 6,400 Commonwealth fighters, according to Ministry of Defence (MOD) figures. African soldiers from Swaziland to Kenya have taken the Queen’s shilling with large enlistments from Ghana, Gambia and Zimbabwe.
In July last year, the British government suspended direct recruitment from the Commonwealth as part of a bid to cut the Armed Forces by a fifth. That year, it axed more than 5,000 soldiers from the ranks.
Yet, this year, young African men are still knocking at the gates of the British Defence Attache in Pretoria. They are trying to follow in the footsteps of men like Kieran Burke, a South African who joined the colors in 2005 and served with Botha. He says it was a career move.
“I wanted to eventually, once I got military experience, join the UN.”
Burke insists most Africans join for more than a red passport.
“With young guys coming in from Africa, it was a means to an end.”
The men he served with, from the continent, just wanted to be professional soldiers, he says. The British Army was organized, well-equipped and moneyed.
“The South Africans, Ghanaians and Fijians were the cream of the crop [and] we [lose] these guys to a foreign army. In some ways, it’s misplaced,” he says.
Burke tried to join the South African army. He had a Humanities degree but the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) wouldn’t let him enlist.
“I was informed by my own army [that] I was too old, I was 24,” he says.
So, he enlisted with the Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Wiltshire regiment instead and did six months of basic training. He excelled as a private and was in line to train as an officer at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. But when he was asked to wait, in his rank, for two and half years he felt it was time to leave. He wanted to go into combat as a lieutenant, not a private.
After three months with a regiment, soldiers have to decide whether to leave or to stay. After this window, a four-year contract is signed and leaving the British Army is not an option.
“It was very difficult to get out,” remembers Burke.
But he talked his way out and is now a journalist in South Africa.
Despite his clean escape, Burke and other South Africans who have served, or are serving, in foreign armies may be skirting mercenary law back home. A piece of legislation known as the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act (FMA), passed in 1998, prohibits any South African citizen from engaging in ‘mercenary activity’ both within and outside the Republic. This means South Africans offering services as direct combatants in an international conflict for pay are committing an offense.
There is a way around this. The law can be subverted by placing a request for exemption with the National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC), based at the Department of Defence. But Burke says this was not considered by him or his countrymen who joined the British Army.
“There was no notion that you had to let the South African government know that you were in the British Army. If there was an issue, I was not aware of it,” he says.
Foreign fighters are a huge threat to South Africa’s international interests and obligations. Part of the reason the 1998 Act was drafted was because South Africa had been implicated in major, often scandalous, diplomatic embarrassments with its citizens aiding the overthrow of governments or selling arms to rebel groups across Africa.
The first FMA conviction was Richard Rouget – popularly known as Colonel Sanders – in 2005. He pled guilty to assisting the government of Ivory Coast suppress dissidents three years earlier. Rouget wasn’t born South African; he was a French military veteran who earned his citizenship through naturalization. He admitted to supplying the Ivorian government with military equipment, training and a contingent of South African pilots. The State proved that Rouget and his men were also active combatants during the Ivory Coast conflict. The men were paid €6,000 ($7,500) monthly. In addition, Rouget was paid €340,000 ($430,000) by the Ivorian authorities for military equipment.
Rouget was found guilty and slapped with a R100,000 ($9,000) fine and a suspended sentence of five years. He made an appeal for leniency and was granted a reprieve of R25,000 ($2,200) on his fine. The same year, Mark Thatcher was sentenced, under the same legislation, for his part in an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea. He walked away with a R3 million ($270,000) fine and a four-year suspended sentence.
Since the FMA became law in South Africa, only a handful of cases have gone to trial. However, it does raise concerns of the legitimacy of soldiers like Botha and Burke doing battle for another nation and fighting wars as proxies.
In many ways, the story of the African foreign legion, stripped bare, is the story of the African migrant, with stars and stripes on.

Going To War For  Money And A Passport

Inspired by the life of her son Dan Eldon, a Reuters photojournalist who was stoned and beaten to death in Somalia in 1993 when he was 22 years old, Kathy Eldon co-founded the Creative Visions Foundation. It is a hub where creative activists (like her son) turn ideas into positive actions to build social movements that impact the world. (Disclosure: I am a board member of Creative Visions Foundation.)
Kathy is also the author of In the Heart of Life, her memoir that was released this month (Harper One). After I read the book, I immediately sent Kathy an email filled with unedited thoughts straight from my head to the keyboard:
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5815" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Pure-JOY-173x300.jpg" alt="" width="173" height="300" />
“I finished In the Heart of Life late last night. It is a gift and will be a gift to all who read it. I was moved, touched and unsettled. I cried, smiled and thought. I felt lucky to be let into your life – a real and raw life – a book that is authentic and transparent. I felt your pain and suffering – the pain and suffering that happened years before your son Dan’s tragic death. I tried to stay removed – to not internalize it – but that was impossible. It brought up every emotion, made me think, took me to places I had thought were buried and gave me permission to always live my life. You’ve inspired me…”
I asked Kathy to answer this question: “What are the top five calamities, catastrophes, disasters and disruptions that were critical in your growth and enabled you to become who you are meant to be and live a life of joy? Lessons others can learn from.”
&nbsp;
<h4>1) Apartheid South Africa</h4>
When I was 16, I was thrilled when selected for a seven-month stay as a foreign exchange student in South Africa. However, marooned in an Afrikaans-speaking school in Bloemfontein (which bore an uncanny resemblance to my hometown, Cedar Rapids, Iowa), I spent my time learning a language that sounds like you’re spitting up phlegm. Even worse, meeting black Africans was strictly prohibited in Apartheid South Africa, and my host family was under surveillance by the secret police because “Oom” Bram, Uncle Bram, had defended Nelson Mandela and freedom fighters during the notorious Rivonia Trial. He managed to save those convicted from execution, although they were condemned to life imprisonment. Tragically, Bram was also punished for his radical beliefs. Accused of being a Communist, he was also sentenced to life imprisonment and died as a result of the harsh treatment he received in jail.
Living in South Africa shattered my Midwestern illusions about life, but the experience prepared me for a lifetime as a journalist, author and filmmaker, determined to tell stories about courageous individuals like my first hero, Bram Fischer, whose fearless stand for justice forever disrupted my life.
&nbsp;
<h4>2) Kids</h4>
I was only 24 when I had my first child, Dan, an unexpected development for a determined Wellesley grad whose only ambition was to get out of college and change the world. Suddenly, after marrying an Englishman and moving to London, the only thing I was changing was diapers. Living in a dreary British suburb, with no money for babysitters, and another baby on the way, I had to reinvent myself as a creative hometrepreneur, creating work I could manage without leaving the house. I sewed my clothes, wrote children’s books and produced toys and jewelry to sell to my neighbors. When the kids were in nursery school, I worked as a substitute teacher at the American School in London, overseeing noisy middle-school kids who thought art class was recess.
A loud voice, eyes at the back of my head, as well as a creative approach to problem-solving and the ability to deal with just about anyone are qualities that have served me well since my frustrating years as mother, teacher and wife.
&nbsp;
<h4>3) Divorce</h4>
Removed from all that was safe and familiar, in search of a self I had somehow lost along the way, after leaving my husband I developed a devastating blood condition that nearly killed me. After slowly recovering, I was still filled with guilt and shame, and faced a bleak and uncertain future. But then, by chance, I met a remarkable Ismaili woman, Zarina Dyer, who introduced me to Shakti Gawain’s book, Living in the Light. By page three I was hooked on the author’s description of a place that “all of us must pass through at one time or another, what mystics call ‘the piercing of the veil of illusion.’”
“It’s the point when we truly realize that our physical world is not the ultimate reality and begin to turn inward to discover the true nature of existence. The moment may co-incide with a sense of reaching rock-bottom, but then we may fall through a trapdoor into a bright new world, the world of spiritual truth. “Only by moving fully into the darkness can we move through it into the light.”
Over the next few weeks I met frequently with Zarina, who urged me to be patient with myself. “Everything happens in its own time,” she said, adding, “When the student is ready the teacher appears.”
After my serendipitous encounter with that unlikely teacher I realized that I had to find the trapdoor and allow myself to fall into it. After a terrifying
descent into profound darkness, one day I was able to emerge again, blinking in the unaccustomed light, aware that once again, my dreams of hope, purpose – and even love – were possible again.
&nbsp;
<h4>4) Death Of My Son</h4>
My son Dan became a photojournalist for Reuters in Somalia, where he covered a devastating famine and a bloody civil war. When he and three friends were murdered by a mob, I descended into a downward spiral. Wracked with guilt at having encouraged him to become a journalist, I knew I was to blame for his death at the age of 22.
My journey to understand why my son died to tell an important story – and why I had to live to tell one – was to shape the next 20 years of my life. Over time, thankfully, I have discovered that Dan’s creative, activist spirit, as transmitted through 17 journals he left behind, has inspired countless others to believe they, too, can lead more exciting, adventurous and purposeful lives. Because Dan was killed, we launched the Creative Visions Foundation which celebrates “creative activists” like Dan, who are telling stories that need to be told about problems that need to be solved. Since 2004, we have worked with more than 200 artists, writers, photographers and filmmakers whose powerful, positive spirits ignite sparks in others, bringing new light, life and purpose to our world.
&nbsp;
<h4>5) Happiness</h4>
Recently, after a long patch when my husband had to deal with a deadly form of cancer, and then the after-
effects of the harsh cure, a new chemo treatment resulted in remission for Michael, a delightful disruption from the endless round of blood transfusions and weariness that has accompanied him for more than three years. Now, we don’t take anything for granted, instead we focus on creating vivid memories of moments, hours and days that will remain with us always, a reminder of the joy of now, and the preciousness of each second we have on earth.

Women in politics: myths debunked

After tragedy in Somalia,  one woman’s path to self-discovery and pure joy

The hard boiled trade unionist sat and wept before journalists as he told of his last attempt to save some of the 44 lives—including two police officers, lost in a violent and bloody week at one of South Africa’s biggest and most troubled platinum mines.
For a week in August more than 3,000 workers protested on top of Wonderkop Hill around two kilometers from the gates of Marikana Mine, in Rustenburg 122km north west of Johannesburg. Almost the entire workforce of 30,000 people downed tools in support of more pay for the rock drillers, who carry out the hardest and most dangerous work for the least pay.
The president of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), Joseph Mathunjwa, recalled the last few minutes before angry strikers rushed the police.
“Please leave this place; they are going to kill you… I kneeled there, I tried to plead with them… They said to me they think it’s safe to be on the mountain. ‘If we have to be killed let the police come and kill us… We want money that can keep our families going’ [they said],” Mathunjwa says.
Mineworkers in North West’s Lonmin Platinum mine began striking on August 10 for salary increases from an estimated R4,500 ($540) to R12,500 ($1,500). Many have blamed rivalry between AMCU and the biggest trade union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), for the tension that led to the fatal shooting.
AMCU denies this. It says the union was asked to intervene on August 13 and was merely doing its job.
“I never thought that the history of the Sharpeville massacre would happen in 2012, in a democratic society,” said Mathunjwa.
AMCU voiced their frustrations with their organization being wrongfully charged as orchestrating the massacre. Mathunjwa argued that they were a recognized union in some sections at Lonmin and had a membership of 7,000.
“Why involve violence now?”
Eddie Majadibodu, the head of bargaining for the NUM, saw the shootings and how police dispersed strikers in the aftermath on the following day to prevent more violence.
“The NUM wants a full public inquiry to determine exactly what happened,” he says.
It is one of the few issues upon which both unions agree.
The ministry of police spokesperson, Zweli Mnisi, says the matter has been a brewing labor issue, employee versus employer. The police were called in to retain order as the constitution does not call for barbaric behavior, he said. Two police officers were killed on the first day that violence struck, he says that the workers were in possession of illegal arms are and dared the cops saying: “You dare us, we won’t move. If you want war, we’ll give you war.”
“From our side it’s not the duty of the police to be labor brokers,” he says.
Police confirmed that 44 people had died on the night of August 16 when police first used water cannon and then bullets to stop a rushing crowd.
“The [Independent Police Investigative Directorate] IPID, who police the police, are onsite to determine who fired the first shot,” he says.
Lonmin chairman, Roger Phillimore, said: “We are treating the developments around police operations this afternoon [August 17] with the utmost seriousness. The South African Police Service (SAPS) have been in charge of public order and safety on the ground since the violence between competing labor factions erupted over the weekend, claiming the lives of eight of our employees and two police officers. It goes without saying that we deeply regret the further loss of life in what is clearly a public order rather than labor relations associated matter.”
Workers at Marikana risked dismissal by ignoring an ultimatum from Lonmin, the world’s third largest platinum producer, to return to work by August 17. President Jacob Zuma cut short a regional SADC conference, held in Maputo, Mozambique, to return home so he could visit Marikana.
As the sun went down on the day after the killings a group of women gathered around Wonderkop Hill and wept for their lost men.
“You have stolen our husbands, you have stolen our brothers,” shouted one distraught woman at police.
Only an inquiry will tell us how this happened.

Tag: Death

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Going To War For Money And A Passport

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