So Close to Gaza: Inside a Night the Gaza Flotilla Didn’t Reach Shore

On 31 August 2025, author Zukiswa Wanner left Johannesburg for Tunis to join civilians from 43 countries aboard a flotilla attempting to break the 18-year blockade of Gaza. The blockade, enforced by Israel, has for years restricted the movement of people and the delivery of humanitarian aid, including food and medication, to Palestinians, even as civilian deaths continue to mount. Her book,Flotilla: A Journey of Conscience, is a first-person account of that journey: the uneasy preparations, the rhythms and tensions of life at sea and the slow, hopeful approach towards Gaza that many aboard believed would end on its shores.

Written in an intimate, diaristic register, the book captures both the political stakes of the mission and the small human rituals that sustained it such as shared meals, jokes, faith, frustration and resolve. In the excerpt below, lightly edited for length, Wanner recounts one of the flotilla’s most harrowing moments: the final night aboard the Mendi Reincarnated as it nears Gaza, is taunted and intercepted by the Israeli Occupation Forces and ultimately disabled at sea. It’s a scene shaped as much by exhaustion and dark humour as by fear, where chocolates meant for Gaza’s children remain uneaten, dates are carefully saved and the stubborn, fragile and collective belief of the crew carries them further than the boat itself ever could.

We have two new members on the boat due to problems on other boats that could not continue with the flotilla. We finally have a real doctor on board and we are all keen to make her comfortable because Captain has been having problems with his back and Eurozone with her tooth and here is someone who will help. Namesake of the Prophet and my compatriot R even wash the dishes when she is on washing up duties and Captain makes bread and between The Researcher and Captain, her breakfast duties are mostly taken over.

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Kids, go to school. It will serve you well later in life, possibly even on a boat hoping to create a humanitarian corridor. The other member is Awda, so-named by me because she shares a name with a Gazan hospital.

I don’t know whether it’s testament to how easygoing everyone on Mendi Reincarnated is or the affability of the two new members but they immediately fit in. And most of us find ourselves on the bow of the boat on Wednesday the 1st of October. Although the lines have long been blurred between the crew and the participants, the IT guy on Mendi Reincarnated – I secretly call him Siddhartha because he is constantly seeking spiritually – has us singing a song while he records where each of us sings lyrics to some song he heard somewhere and we end with the line “sailing for humanity”.

The family has been tight-knit and we are harmonious about a lot of things but the von Trapp family singers, we shall never be. There are a lot of giggles as we ask him on whether we are going up on humanity or going down and if going up, how up is up? Siddhartha gives up and just records what he gets.

The sunset is that bit more glorious as we know tonight is our last night before we get to Gaza. Around 7 in the evening, the apartheid Israeli navy splashed some water on our boat and came near enough to us that we handed the Coordinator guy our phones and he handed them, a little less gently than we had given them to him, to the Mediterranean. We rushed it.

They were just teasing us. They left us alone and continued intercepting others. This was when we found out that Siddhartha had neither sent to Cloud nor posted on IG our badly sung but sure to have been award-winning video of “Sailing for Humanity”.

How is this our IT guy? I sent photos to this publication to have them saved before I threw my phone away. As we had to keep our lights off so as not to call attention to ourselves but still be alert enough, none of us dared to go down to sleep so we slept with our eyes open, as it were, and dined on dates, mixed nuts and water.

The bilge pump for Mendi Reincarnated started having a fault just at this time when none of the other boats could come and assist us. Seeing this, R the Compatriot, Namesake of the Prophet and The Coordinator went to work getting water out with a bucket as soon as they saw that the Apartheid Forces were out of sight. A commendable job as we continued pushing.

We had already passed the 50 nautical miles line and were going further in. Awda walked in after Fajr and said matter-of-factly, “they are here.” “How far are we, brother?” incorrigible me asked the First Mate who was at the helm.

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