Our country is a shining beacon of hope

RODWELL Khomazana, the 9-yearold Zimbabwean boy whose face was badly mauled by a hyena, was not the first case of a child being flown to our country to save his life.

So many medical people and even volunteers worked tirelessly against the clock to get the boy to Joburg as quickly as possible as he was suffering tremendously, screaming at night as he relives his ordeal.

He will need numerous operations. Dr Ridwan Mia, who operated on toddler Pippie Kruger in 2011 after she sustained third-degree burns to her face, will be leading the medical team.

He estimates that the first operation will take a total of 20 hours.

In 1998 Witcheslav Sjewtshenko, a four-year-old Ukranian boy, had been born with a misformed penis, which prevented him from urinating.

This was believed to have been caused by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Several operations in his country to save his life had been unsuccessful.

As fate would have it, his situation was discovered by Pastor Gerhard Kotze of the Franschhoek Christian Assembly while doing missionary work there.

He was brought here and Dr Butch Strasheim was one of the urologists who operated on him at the Paarl Medi-clinic.

Generous donations made it possible for him and his mom to stay with the Kotze family for a year while recuperating.

The boy could even be enrolled at a local pre-primary school where he learnt one of his favourite hymns, This is the day the Lord has made.

He could even say a few Afrikaans words like, “Ag nee man!“(Oh, please man!). But hopefully the Afrikaans word “Eina!“(Ouch!) could now be erased from his vocabulary.

But there was another outstanding example of how our country had a hand in a heartwarming incident that played out in Israel in 1997.

For this our heart pioneer, Dr Chris Barnard, must have been delighted. Nine-year-old Yuval Kav, a Jewish boy, was knocked off his bicycle by a speeding motorist in Tel Aviv. He died instantly.

His heart was transplanted into the ailing three-year-old Arab girl Reem al-Jaroushi, which saved her life. Yuval's father, David, had to make a quick decision.

He said it was as if he heard his son telling him: “Do it Dad, it’s good!”

This story touched people all over the world.

In many newspapers the story led with headings such as “The little heart that united a country”.

When Yuval's mom Brachah could speak to the media, all she could say was: “He is gone, but his spirit is here with all of us.”

Reem’s mom Amal said: “We are now one family.”

This incident reminded his dad of another tragedy that struck their family: his whole family was killed by the Nazis in a Warsaw ghetto during World War II.

We are also reminded of how many times animals, even snakes, that needed urgent operations to save their lives, are operated on in hospitals.

This shows us how sacred all lives are. So many countries on the brink of civil war, came here to come and learn how ours extricated itself from total disaster when the whole world held its breath in 1994 when we were also teetering on sinking ourselves into the abyss.

Finally, will not even these and many other heart-rending stories make people who shout for the death penalty to be reinstated, sit up and ponder if their violent solution is a solution at all. KOERT MEYER | Welgelegen