Three meditations on the death of a young South African in Britain

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.

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 – the ‘Born Free’ boykie

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.

Three long years passed after I moved back to the United Kingdom. Ali arrived at Chester station for a visit in April 2022, with a huge suitcase. We sailed on the Mersey Ferry, walked through the players’ tunnel at Old Trafford, and Ali saw London’s glories for the first time. He pretended to share my obsession with orangutans and gorillas; so much so, he might have been forgiven for believing on my guided tours that only orangutans lived at Chester Zoo.

He returned in 2023 and relished it when Alex, a military chaplain, drove us to the Skyline overlooking Glasgow in his classical Hudson Hornet. That evening, we took a tender with my brother, James, and a few others, to a tiny island on Loch Lomond. Soon after, Ali decided to move to Britain and work as a carer.

Alastair’s ordeal of the night

In the spirit of South African truth-telling, when Ali relocated to Chester last Autumn, 2024, I failed him. I did not do nearly enough to protect him when he was in a vulnerable situation. Soon after arriving to live in Britain, Ali lodged with an avuncular landlord close to retirement age. Within two months, however, we became alarmed at the decline in Ali’s wellbeing. This was, in part, due to the demanding duties of caring in 21st-century Britain.

But Ali also explained to me that his living arrangement had deteriorated. During this time, careless gossip about Ali got back to him, and he began to withdraw. In a domino thread, this, in turn, led to where Ali chose to live at the end of his life. My second meditation on death is that I should’ve acted as a whistleblower when I learnt that Ali was being bullied. He felt that he, as he did, had to move to the outskirts of the city. I’ll forever see Ali’s big, soulful eyes when he spoke to me of his pain and rage.

My third meditation on death is that one needs to know who will be at the funeral. No one had told Ali’s loved ones that the erstwhile landlord was coming. I texted a friend to ask if he would be at the funeral. “Yes” was the brisk reply. My fitness watch recorded my heart racing. At the service, the landlord crassly sat directly behind me, displacing my housemate to a row further back. My agency stripped, and in a blur, I somehow delivered my eulogy. Any healing that the service might have afforded me and the other chief mourners was robbed. When someone you love dies, make sure you know who might be coming to the funeral, and consider a seating plan.

Ali rose like the morning star

Sometimes there is darkness before light. In January, Ali billeted with a friend, Jeremy, where he flourished. Ali rose like the biblical morning star. In many ways, Ali was emblematic of the global South African diaspora. He was brave, loving, and many were touched by his grace. He started at the very bottom of the rung of the ladder in Cheshire as a carer, to rise and rise again. He withstood hardship, loneliness and bullying to remake himself.

Transcending his early difficulties, he secured a prestigious role as a Cloud engineer and moved into a beautiful apartment with vaulted ceilings on Chester’s periphery. He finally felt safe and, like a protea turning to the sunlight, was beginning to open his life to others again.

At the time of his death, Ali was the happiest I’d ever known him. The last time I saw him was on Saturday, 20 September. I can still see him in my mind’s eye, leaning over his stylish coffee machine, laughing. He gave me a card that day. In it, he wrote: “As stated by Solomon the Wise: ‘A merry heart does good like a medicine.’ ”

If Ali were here today, he would tell you, dear reader, that we are in the twilight – the time of day that older South African Indians call “the hour of cow dust”. This is when the world looks as if it has been dipped in molten gold, and the dust of the regal Nguni cattle hangs in the KwaZulu-Natal air.

He’d also tell you that our time is later than we comprehend. Hold on to your loved ones with every fibre of your being. When the doctor and I found Ali, I felt wave after wave of love cascade over me. It is deep winter now in the northern hemisphere. The trees in the riverside garden are stark and bare. The solitary swan still glides by our empty, rickety bench. DM

Jon Cayzer is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He has worked as a speechwriter and in other political roles in South Africa and the UK, including for the DA and IFP. He was Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s private secretary from 2004-2010. He currently works for the UK Civil Service as a leadership coach and as a speechwriter.