This tribute honours Alastair ‘Ali’ Govender, a 34-year-old South African ‘Born Free’ who tragically died from a brain aneurysm in Chester, UK. Alastair Govender and I liked to sit on a rickety bench under a beautiful tree in my communal river garden by the River Dee. We’d shift our weight, each with a glass of wine in one hand, to prevent the bench from collapsing.
This June, the woods on the other side were lovely, dark and deep. One Saturday, we hosted a lunch party for three couples whom I called “swans” for their beauty, and my wonderful housemate. There is, as it happens, a solitary swan, pure and graceful, that poignantly glides past most days.
Ali, at the age of 34, was in his prime and had started a prestigious new job. As temperatures dropped and autumn began calling, four months later, on Friday, 10 October, Ali’s friends became anxious because for two days he had failed to respond to calls. I made numerous calls to the police and ambulance services.
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For hours, each agency referred me back to the other, declining to conduct a welfare check or send an ambulance. In despair, two friends and I called a locksmith. At around 10pm, a doctor and I entered the apartment and found Ali dead.
The coroner later told us that he died from a brain aneurysm. My first meditation on death is that one never knows the hour. If you live alone, please, from the bottom of my heart I urge you, give a trusted friend or family member keys to one’s home and write a will.
This is especially important if you are a South African living overseas. Ali was a “Born Free” boy who grew up in the golden age of President Nelson Mandela. Ali’s world view was formed by the searing impact that this history of reconciliation, forgiveness, and “truth-telling” had upon Ali from childhood.
He inherited the evangelical Christian faith of his parents and community and had an abiding love of the Scripture. I met him, aged 27, in 2018. He was a streetwise, football-loving Johannesburger.
I had returned from a lengthy time in the US, when Ali messaged me to say that there were some errors on the website of a feminist NGO that works with women and girls, where I served as a public affairs consultant. We met for a coffee, and our lives became intertwined. Small in stature, he possessed the heart of a lion.
Blessed with a scientific intellect, Ali had inspiring depths of compassion and empathy for others. I found it unnerving. He had beautiful, old-fashioned manners like, in fact, Mandela and the late Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
In Johannesburg, he’d drop me off at the NGO – usually after a stop at a French patisserie. He complained every day that I made him late for work but, mysteriously, we still pulled into the patisserie. He solved every problem.
When Winnie Mandela died, we were due to have a televised event at Constitution Hill to celebrate Mama Mandela’s life when, the night before, the sound system failed. At around 10.30pm, he conjured up a new system from someone he reverently called “uncle” on the phone. This didn’t narrow it down, because, as I discovered, he called every older man “uncle” and woman, “auntie”.
He effortlessly mixed with people from every walk of life. He was as self-assured and urbane with Zulu royalty like Prince Buthelezi, or political leaders like the then Mayor of Johannesburg, Herman Mashaba, and other celebrities, as he was when we were barbecuing with his friends by the pool. There was fun and bellyaching laughter.
After work, we went to bars and edgy jazz clubs. One spring day, we saw a magnificent herd of elephants in the volcanic basin of Pilanesberg National Park. As we drove back, we stopped in Pretoria, bathed in the purple magnificence of jacaranda blossoms.
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