DEPLORABLE WAY THE SOUTH AFRICAN POLICE DELUDE THE BEREAVED

Dear Mothers everywhere,

          What would you think if your son became ill and died in hospital and the Death Notice you received from the authorities stated his death was an “unnatural” one?

          This is exactly what happened to Fatima Kiel. The distress of losing her son Fuad Petersen very suddenly at the age of 48 was compounded by the mystery that this word cast over the cause of his death.

He was living with her in the family's flat in the Ocean View Township in Cape Town’s Southern suburbs when his body began to swell excessively. He was taken to the False Bay Hospital nearby from where he was transferred to the larger Groote Schuur Hospital as his condition deteriorated.

There, she was told, the doctors decided to amputate his one leg, but sadly he never survived the operation.

This could hardly be classified as an “unnatural death,” so you can imagine how worried she got when she saw what was on the form. She was thinking of all kinds of horrendous possibilities that are all too common in gangster riddle Ocean View where shootings are an almost daily occurrence. ‘How could he have died violently without us knowing?’ kept haunting her.

She works for us so I set out to solve this ‘who done it’ that the Police showed no sign of doing. The way the form had been completed by Dr Laura Taylor the state pathologist at the Division of Forensic Medicine at the University of Cape Town complicated the case even further.

She certified that she had done a medico-legal investigation into Fuad’s death and that his body was no longer required for the purposes of the Inquest Act. How odd is that if his death was an unnatural one?

Under the section headed Cause of Death there are three blocks: 30.1 Natural; 30.2 Unnatural and 30.3 Under investigation and she marked the Unnatural block with an X. The rest were left blank. In what country would an “unnatural death” not be investigation other than in South Africa if this kind of mumbo jumbo is to be believed?

In an effort to get hold of Dr Taylor I phoned the number given for her on the form and when the lady who answered told me she was not there she gave me the doctor’s email address.

10 February 2020: I emailed Dr Taylor; explained the problem Fatima was having, and included copies of the controversial document the doctor had signed as well as the Death Certificate. I emphasised that the ‘not knowing’ had just added to Fatima’s grief. “Can you tell me what evidence you had that made you conclude that Fuad died of ‘unnatural causes’?” I asked. I got a message to say my email had been delivered but no reply.

20 Feb: As I got no reply to my first email, I sent another one asking if she got it. “If so,” I told her, “I would be very much obliged if you could give me an answer because his mother is in quite a state because she doesn’t know why the cause of her son’s death has been described as ‘unnatural causes.’?” I got no reply.

2 March: I emailed her again saying: “As a pathologist who works with the police I assume you are a government employee. If this is the case it is deplorable that you don’t answer my emails when I am trying to get clarity for a mother about how her son died. The Notice of Death document with your stamp and signature on it is confusing to say the least. How can an ‘unnatural death’ not be under investigation unless of course this had been completed by the time you filled in the form. It’s hard to imagine how this could be possible because Petersen died on 21 January 2020 and your stamp on the document indicates that you completed it two days later. The Police don’t normally work that quickly.

          “This is a terrible way for the authorities to treat people when one of their loved ones die especially, as was the case, here when her son was only 48.” Still no reply.

          After making further unsuccessful attempts to contact the doctor on the phone the lady who answers it told me I should contact Detective Booi at the Woodstock Police station, which is a long way from Fatima’s home and ours.

          I called him several times only to be put through to extensions that nobody answered AT A POLICE STATION. Then one day my luck changed. An officer told me I should phone back shortly as Detective Booi had gone out for a few minutes. When I did that the same policeman answered and when I asked for Detective Booi this dark comedy took a new twist. Booi he said was on leave.

            After he apologised for his mistake I made a last ditch effort to get to the bottom of this strange government behaviour. I told him what I wanted to know. To

 begin with he said that Fatima would have to come to Woodstock as it was not something they could discuss over the phone. Then he mellowed and gave me this hard to believe information - a new policy had been introduced and the Police were now treating all deaths like Petersen’s as “unnatural”.

          That means our Police Service is turning natural deaths into crime mysteries when there is no logical reason for doing this. And what’s more these are unique to the world – they never do get investigated properly or at all.

          Fatima subsequently got a message via a relative that there was nothing “unnatural” about her son’s death. This made her son’s Death Certificate completely untrue.  It states he died of “unnatural causes” (plural) and the signature on it, which is said to be that of the Director-General: Home Affairs, is so ridiculously flamboyant that nobody would be able to even guess what his/her name is.

Regards

Jon, an investigator, Consumer Watchdog and Poorman’s Press Ombudsman.

P.S. Our South African Police Service has always had a Keystone Cops aura about it, together with a reputation for not being too finicky about sticking to the law when dealing with suspects. So this kind of ridiculous change in the way deaths are dealt with can do nothing to endear it to the public. And as a doctor you would think that Laura Taylor would have at least answered my emails even if she has no say in how the policy is implemented.   

CORONA VIRUS - THE TRUTH WE ALL SHOULD FACE

Dear Sensible People,

Four Cape Town bottle stores
looted in 24 hours. What will
be next?

          This global lockdown is doing far more harm to everybody than any virus and if you take South Africa as an example this is why it should never have happened. Here we call it a national disaster to make it more scary.

          By 10 April 2020 there were 2003 confirmed cases with 24 deaths in a population of 60-Million 15 days into the 21 day lockdown, which has just been extended by another two weeks.

Tuberculosis (TB):

This has been running wild in ourr country for years and nobody suggested any form of lockdown to contain it. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) it has been the leading cause of deaths in the entire country with 63 000 in 2018. This was down considerably from the 124 000 who died in 2016, but the decrease had nothing to do with any lockdown. TB is very similar to the Corona Virus in that it is spread from person to person through the air when somebody sneezes, coughs or even talks. In Cape Town where the homeless were being put into special shelters there were reports of this being stopped because TB was so prevalent among them. Before this current worldwide PANIC did you ever see anybody going to the shops wearing a mask to prevent them from getting TB?  I accept there is medication for this, but it hasn’t stopped far more people dying than anything like the numbers that will succumb to Corona for which there is, as yet, no antidote. Have we ever done anything on a large scale to prevent the interaction of people aimed at curbing the spread of                                                            *    *    *    *                       

This is what our daughter Belinda Glynn in Australia thinks about the Corona
remedy. If you believe she just went along with with my view you would would be totally
wrong. I stopped influencing her independent thought when was about 3 and still living in South Africa

                                                        

HIV/ Aids: South Africa is said to have the highest incidence of this in the world.  In 2018 71 000 people were classified as having died from Aids related deaths. There is no cure for it but lives can be prolonged with antiviral treatment. In that year there were 240 000 new infections and our country has an estimated 7-million people living with the disease. It makes them susceptible to fatal consequences if they get certain other illnesses. In spite of the huge number of Aids deaths there has never been any kind of ban on sleeping together although Corona has prompted our comical Minister of Police Bheki Cele to add a no kissing rule to the ‘keep your distance’ one we already had. In fact the current Corona lockdown could cause a massive spike in Aids. If you are confined to your home or live in a shack with no TV what are you mostly likely to do for entertainment? Sales of condoms and Viagra are booming according to somebody we know who works in a pharmacy. Many men however, won’t wear any kind of protection and the poor can't afford condoms anyway. Why hasn’t Cele banned the sale of these because they are clearly encouraging people to do a lot more than touch each other. When did we last have a total lockdown to try and eradicate this deadly disease?
                                                  *    *    *    *

Influenza and Pneumonia: According to the WHO 35 331 people died of these in South Africa in 2017 with flu accounting for around 11 000 a year. The flu vaccine is about 60% effective in healthy adults but the problem is that not nearly enough people get this done. Has South Africa ever made it compulsory to have a flu vaccination?

                                                  *    *    *    *

Road accidents: There are around a million road accidents a year in South Africa of which more than 40 a day result in fatal injuries. But have any of our leaders ever so much as suggested that every driver must stay at home until they have passed an advanced driving test?
                                       *    *    *    *                                         

              The total so far in the 210 countries that have got the Virus is 1 617 530; deaths 97 236 and known recoveries 366 407 in a population of 7.8-billion. A drop in the ocean you could say.   

          As far as I was able to establish the world has never been closed before the way governments have been PANICED into doing now by this Corona Virus. An increased sense of anxiety is one of the mental stresses suffered by those with a panic disorder.  This results in the misinterpretation of non-threatening situations as terrifying events.

          This is exactly what I believe leaders of countries everywhere have done because of an illness that is no more deadly than a host of others that have been with us for a long time.

        The economic destruction they are causing is too terrifying to contemplate with none of the financial experts able to put a price on it because it is so vast.

Regards,

Jon, a realist who is thankful he and his wife have a TV to watch as well as other technical ways of staying in touch with the rest of the world; no business, no bond, no car repayments and that there is a guarantee on our retirement income investment so it won’t be affected by the stock exchange crash.  
See also:panic could destroy most of us ; Is Sweden the country to follow           

SWEDEN BECOMES THE FIRST COUNTRY TO FACE CORONAVIRUS REALITY

Dear PANIC stricken VIRUS scaremongers,

         Bravo Sweden! Well done. Out of the 2003 or so countries that have so far got it this tiny country with a population of 10-million is the first to wake up to the fact that lock-down will do more harm than good.

         According to Britain’s The Telegraph “To Swedes, it’s the rest of the world engaging in a reckless experiment. Faced with what many believe will be a manageable illness Sweden has decided, for now at least, that lock-down represents a greater risk.” 

         It has 5 568 confirmed cases with 308 deaths.

         Meanwhile the rest of the world is committing hara-kiri with various lock-down versions. Millions of people are losing their jobs daily and are wondering where the next meal will come from let alone pay the mortgage, car repayments and a host of other things.

         Economies are being devastated. You can’t raise taxes if nobody is working.

           Globally the number of cases has reached 1 000 000 in a population of 7.8- billion. What’s that as percentage? I can’t work it out but it must be such a small fraction that if your own savings went down by that amount you wouldn’t even notice it. So if you did the same calculation with the 53 000 deaths so far the result would be even more minute.

         In spite of this governments everywhere are doing what no virus ever could. Corona must be laughing at how a brainless virus has been able to spread such a deadly PANIC among what is supposed to be the earth’s most advanced form of life.

         You can’t get much more brainless than that.

She is South Africa's richest woman so she knows what she's talking about. Is this what we
want because governments are too pigheaded to change to the Swedish way.

         In South Africa the caged sexes are tearing each other apart with 87 000 gender-based violence cases reported in just one week. And 1 700 people have been arrested for being naughty by breaking the curfew in just as short a period. Where they are putting them all is anybody’s guess.

So which is worse: confining people to stop them getting something that has so far affected 1462 lives in South Africa with 5 deaths in a population of 60-Million or let them live normally knowing that Corona is no more lethal than numerous other illnesses people get every day?

         For a moment Donald Trump showed the same kind of sensible approach to the Virus as the Swedes when he said: “We can’t have the cure worse than the problem.” But then he chickened out and didn’t take it any further, although I accept that he has his difficulties. The governors in each of the 52 US states make their own decisions about what should be done to counteract the Virus. This has resulted in no uniformity with three out of four Americans under some form of lock down.

         The USA PANIC record is 245 175 cases and 6069 deaths in a population of 331-million.

This sums up the situation perfectly

         So before we bankrupt and starve the world by making everybody stay at home for weeks or months every country needs to follow the Swedish example.

It’s the only one that makes sense.

Regards

Jon, an anti-lock-down advocate.

 SEE ALSO:PANIC THE REAL KILLER

GaxoSmithKline's media liaison nightmare

Dear readers,

This is something Emma
Walmsley CEO of GSK should
be told about. But does she concern
herself with bad public relations
 in the far flung corners of her empire

          GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is a giant London based multinational that is the world’s sixth largest pharmaceutical company. But if my experience is any yardstick its public relations must rank somewhere near the bottom. The way it dealt with my media inquiries was tailor made for getting the wrong end of the stick into print.

          Its Aquafresh toothpaste advertisement on South Africa’s DStv had a cartoon like character in the red, white and blue stripes that is characteristic of this brand tapping the side of a tooth. He told us he could “strengthen the enamel.”

          I found this hard to believe so I tried to get GSK Consumer Healthcare in South Africa to back this claim with scientific evidence. Over a period of about three weeks I phoned its Johannesburg office repeatedly in an attempt to speak to the General Manager Kimberley Hunt. The woman on the switchboard told me I had to go through her PA Marie Visser if I wanted Hunt’s email address.

Kimberley Hunt

          At Visser’s extension I always got an automatic reply and leaving a message was useless because she never came back to me.

          As my efforts to get an explanation to allay my concerns proved fruitless I wrote a post (How true are TV ads) questioning the validity of this ad. I also complained to South Africa’s Advertising Regulatory Board (ARB) that GSK was not able to substantiate its claim that Aquafresh “strengthen enamel.”

          My complaint was dismissed because GSK satisfied the Board that Aquafresh contained fluoride which was well known to strengthen teeth.

          Another aspect of GSK’s advertising on DStv that aroused my suspicion was also for toothpaste. Two different United Kingdom dentists appeared in separate ads extolling the virtues of Sensodyne. They were Doctors Hiten Pankhania and Ojo Olumide. Olumide told us that this “actually goes inside the tooth and calms the nerve.”

          As there had been a case of an actor being used in ads of this kind I searched the U.K.’s General Dental Council’s Register and neither of these two appeared to be listed. So this is how my inquiries went from then onwards.

5 Feb 2020: I emailed Marie Visser asking for Hunt’s email address. I told her I was a freelance journalist and I emphasised that I had been taken to task for not getting the correct information from GSK when I wrote my post about Aquafresh so, as I was about to write another one, I wanted to make absolutely sure that I contacted the correct person this time.

10 Feb: I received this email from Virginia Msebenzi GSK’s Legal Director, South and Southern Africa based in the Johannesburg office.“Direct your query to myself and I will request the relevant stakeholders for input. All our rights are fully reserved", was

Virginia Msebenzi

her ominous parting shot. The same day I  replied naming the dentists and asking her if they were perhaps actors as they did not appear to be registered in Britain. "I find it surprising," I told her,"that a company the size of GSK appears to have nobody in its Johannesburg office who is mandated to deal with media inquiries and that mine is of such magnitude that it gets passed to you as the Legal Director."

17 Feb: Msebenzi answered saying that they did have a team that dealt with media inquiries and these should be “channelled through Simphiwe Otto, copied.” She would contact their marketing team about my dentist query and “revert as soon as I receive their response.” I never heard from her again.

27 Feb: Otto, the Communications Co-ordinator, gave me two verbal undertakings on the phone that he would answer my questions by email on specific days and on both 

Otto

occasions he failed to do this. Determined to pin him down I sent him an email telling him that if I did not hear from him by the following day I would go ahead with the post I intended writing about the dentists and his company must not complain that I had failed to get its side of the story.

8 March: I received an email from Olesya Leontyeva head of Communications and Government Affairs based in Russia of all places. She began by telling me how “Consumer feedback is a valuable part of our business, and we appreciate your interest and inputs for our advertorials.” She assured me that all the dentists in 

Olesya Leontyeva

the ads were “real dentists speaking in interviews that were not prescribed.” British dentists, she explained, were used because the South Africa Health Professions Council does not allow its members to appear in ads. She then gave me the UK registration number of the dentists concerned. It seems I drew a blank when I entered their names into the register because their names in the ads were not their full names. After outlining the difficulties I had in getting information out of their Johannesburg office I told her that their own staff was making inquiries like mine into dubious mysteries by taking forever to answer the questions.

“Had I been a newspaper journalist I would have had to meet a deadline ages ago,” I told her.  “I’m really sad you had such experience communicating with our office in South Africa,” she replied.

Regards,

Jon, an exceptionally dogged Consumer Watchdog.

P.S. It obviously can’t do anything to enhance GSK’s reputation to have a Legal Director and a Communication Co-ordinator making undertakings to a journalist which neither of them kept. It also reaches a sky high level of absurdity when a Communications head in Moscow ends up answering a journalist’s questions when nobody in Johannesburg is prepared or allowed to do it. Emma Walmsley this sort of thing is unlikely to reach you in your lofty position as CEO of GSK, but it looks as though you are the only person who can cure this media farce because nobody below you is doing anything about it.

THE NET IS CLOSING ON COIN-IT - THE PONZI SCHEME THAT RIPPED OFF THOUSANDS OF HOPEFUL INVESTORS

Dear Readers,

          Thanks to anti-ponzi scheme activist Rowena James and a group of other like minded Coin-It investors this dubious scheme has been provisionally liquidated. But the battle that just might see the duped investors get some of their money back is far from over.

          Coin-It was the brain child of the Dundee, KwaZulu-Natal based De Beer family headed by Malcolm. It is estimated to have taken some 27 000 investors for a very expensive R2.5 billion ride. They were promised huge returns in a truck buying scheme that, it turned out, involve fictitious vehicles. Rowena was relatively lucky. As one of the early investors she was only R60 000 out of pocket when the scheme was shut down by the Financial Service Conduct Authority.

           Rowena and her group paid R350 each to start the ball rolling to get justice for investors against the De Beers. The money was use for the High Court action to liquidate Coin-It. Their task is huge because on the face of it the De Beers have all the money in the world to fight court cases on every front.

          This is her story:

“Against the odds, us Coin-It investors finally caught a break after months of plugging on and seemingly getting nowhere. After the first two court days we were really beginning to feel defeated, and as you may well know, High court fees do not come cheap. So between comforting victims of this scheme and sharing the truth about the De Beers from Dundee, I have also been encouraging investors to join our liquidation cause. The day before the hearing Coin-it's management issued this memo:

Dear Coin it Clients,

Tomorrow we will again be in Pietermaritzburg High Court in defense of the liquidation of Coin it. Your support and presence in defense of the liquidation will be highly appreciated. Should you be unable to attend please can you send someone to represent you?

All those who wish to attend kindly respond to this message with your T-shirt size as there will be T-shirts available for the first clients that arrive.

NB: Kindly share the MAIN Coin it # on all your social media platforms: 

#BRINGBACKOURCOINIT

Kind Regards

Management

“The result of this memo was three buses and two minibus taxis full of people protesting against the liquidation application arrived outside the High Court in PMB, with placards saying 'Hands off our boss Mr. De Beer'. 

“The Coin-It staff were opposing the liquidation application because they stood to lose their jobs. Fortunately the judge was not swayed by this. 

          “I don't know how many investors eventually paid their R 350.00 so that we could push through to get a ruling from a judge. It is a question for Linda Mazibuko attorneys. They have done very well. Most especially Tsepo, who I know has gone beyond and above to help us achieve victory. Adv. Boulle presented a clear and concise argument and the Judge ruled in our favour. 
         "This would not have been achieved without a relentless group of prayer warriors who had fasted and prayed. God came through for us. 

“Oh how we celebrated, and with reason too, this was a hard fought victory. But our celebrations were not going to last very long. Coin-it's management, the De Beers, sent an email to all investors:

Good day,

As you are aware we were in court yesterday to defend the potential liquidation of Coin it, unfortunately the proceedings did not go in our favour however this is only provisional and not final. We will be back in court again on the 28th May 2020 in defence against the final order being granted. It is necessary to elect a provisional liquidator until it goes back to court on the 28th May 2020. 

Kindly complete this form and email it to docs@coinitcenter.com, it needs to be signed and retuned to us before 8am on Monday morning.

The form from the docs@coinitcenter.com link is a requisition form for a liquidator that Coin it would prefer the court to appoint. 

“So, here I am, convincing investors to join with the liquidator we have chosen, because of his reputation for being excellent at his job as well as a man with integrity.

“We have to get as many of our forms to the liquidator so they can be presented before the Master and hopefully ours are more numerous than those from Coin-It. 

“Wish us well. I will let you know who wins this battle of the liquidators. I thank you kindly, Jon, for opening you blog to allow me to give our fight an audience.”

          Meanwhile the investigation by the *Keystone Hawks plods on. What is supposed to be South Africa’s ace investigative unit the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (The Hawks) made a very disturbing start to its Coin-It inquiry as far as Rowena is concerned. The statement she gave the Hawks was leaked to the very people she was complaining about.

          Coin-It that promoted a profit of up to 200% in three years was not the only De Beer ponzi money spinner. CommEx was another one. In this people were told that various minerals would be bought on their behalf and when they were sold the good hearted De Beers would pass on the substantial profit to the investors. My House was also one of their get-rich-quick offers that involve prefabricated houses.

Keystone Cops

Regards

Jon, who wishes the Coin-It investors the best of luck in their endeavours to get money back from this super confidence trick that should have been closed in its early stages had our enforcement agencies not been sound asleep.  

*The Keystone Cops were fictional, humorous, incompetent policemen featured in slapstick, silent comedy films between 1912 and 1920s.
P.S. The pictures of the scenes outside the court are Rowena's.
P.P.S See also:Feisty Rowena James; Heartless Sunday Times; Newspaper behaving badly; Rowena's death threat .

WORLD PANIC is about to destroy millions more lives than the VIRUS itself.

Dear Sensible People,

        President Trump and others of influence around the world
have been telling us not to PANIC about the Corona Virus. But that's exactly what governments everywhere are doing.
        They are busy closing the world so that we don't catch something that is no worse than a bad cold and far less deadly than numerous other illnesses that millions of people get every day.
        This post was written on 3 March 2020 and on 30 March Trump had this to say:
        "We can't have the cure worse than the problem."  

          According to Wikipedia 251 086 people died between 2001 and 2020 in a handful of what could be considered worldwide epidemics. These do not include the current Corona Virus.  2009 was the worst year when flu accounted for 231 318 of us.

          In the last 20 years this kind of deadly scourge has taken the lives of only a total of a mere 0.000096% of the world's population of 7.8 billion people. Now the Corona virus arrives and everybody completely ignores these figures. They go into a tail spin as if this virus is certain to take out huge numbers of people all around the globe unless it is contained urgently.

          Only about 3% of the 90,000 who have got it so far, mainly in China (Population 1.4-billion) where it started, didn’t make it. It’s hardly surprising that the majority of these were the elderly at the end of the line anyway.

It has so far spread to 60 countries with the Panic Reaction galloping ahead of it.

Panic is being revved into top gear in the United Kingdom (Population 66-million) where they are such pessimists that they are planning to extend the existing mortuary facilities to take the bodies of all the people who haven’t even got sick yet – just in case, you understand.

Panic has caused Japan to cancel its April Cherry Blossom Festival that attracts millions of visitors each year. The Olympic Games that is on the horizon there is also in danger.
Panic has put an end to the planned conference in Cape Town that was scheduled to attract 600 accountants and lawyers from around the world to the city soon. Imagine what a loss that is to the area in a country with a depressed economy. These well healed professionals would have given the city a huge boost.

Panic has shut some schools in Britain after a couple of children were diagnosed with the virus.

Panic has cause a State of Emergency to be declared in Florida (Pop. 21-million) in the USA where two patients have been isolated until cleared by officials. This emergency is similar to alerts issued in parts of California, the country’s most populous state with 37-million people and Washington State (Pop.8-million).

Panic has forced Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson to tell the nation that “a mass epidemic is now possible in the UK.”

Panic among airlines is costing them millions in lost revenue as they whittle down the number of destinations they fly to.

Panic is causing people all over the place to cancel their holidays.

Panic buying is emptying shops as people fear food shortages.

Panic has sent stock markets plummeting.

Billionaire Magda is South Africa's richest woman and is co-founder
and CEO of a financial service company

Panic has already brought assembly lines of vehicle manufacturers in various countries to a halt because they can no longer get essential parts from their usual Chinese suppliers.

Panic will put millions out of work and destroy economies. People could  starve to death.

Panic buying cleared pharmacies in South Africa (Pop.60-million) of masks months ago. I phoned branches of Clicks (700 outlets) and Dischem (106) and at both of them I was told the same story: “Sold out ages ago.” 

That’s how prepared South Africa is even before the Virus really gets going on our shores. So far we have been spared. Our Minister of Health Zweli Mkhize is talking as though his department has everything in place to cope with all eventualities on the
Virus front. Apart from the lack of masks how is he going to solve this aspect? I gather that those who suffer badly from the Virus will need to be on respirators and I can’t 

This is precisely my point

imagine that our hospitals have many of these – certainly not enough to have whole wards full of patients on them. And if people get put on them at home there is the added problem of them having to hold their breath when the power goes off during load shedding. Then there is a question over the flu vaccination that people recommend because nobody wants this disease on top of the Corona Virus. But at my chemist, a branch of DisChem nobody knows when it will arrive.

          Bloomberg the financial media company quotes Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist at John Hopkins University in the States as saying, “The CoV emergency in China has definitely exposed supply chain vulnerability for the pharmaceutical industry which relies heavily on Chinese manufacturing.”

          James Johnson a professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota added to this worrying aspect with this: “Suddenly we could see a big shortage of even boring, old fashioned antibiotics, let alone the new fangled ones.”

          So if the Corona Virus doesn’t kill us, which it won’t, certainly not on anything like a massive scale, Panic could easily do it if we can’t get hold of all kinds of medicines including the run of the mill ones that so many of us take every day just to stay alive.

She can say that again. She was the doctor who dealt with South Africa's first case

          Hopefully this will finally teach the Western world that there is a great deal of truth in that old adage: Never put all your eggs in one basket – China.

Regards

Jon, who has for years been studying Panic to see if he can find a cure. However the only conclusion he has come to is that as there is no antidote; the only way to rid the world of it would be to lure humanity to its complete destruction much like the Pied Piper did with rats. “A little drastic I know, but has anybody got a better idea? On second thoughts isn't that exactly what we are doing now?"

           

        

A MADMAN ON SAFARI

Dear Fellow Travellers,

My family and friends thought I was mad when I left Cape Town on my own to criss-cross Africa hitch-hiking.

Those were the days when hospitality for strangers like me was brilliant, and lone women would have no qualms about giving me a lift.

Those were the days when I thought nothing of travelling hundreds of miles on the load in the back of a truck ducking thorn trees determined to hook me off.

These two guys were driving identical MG's like this & I
got a lift with the one in front. That's when I nearly came
to  grief before I had hardly started. The Limpopo River
on the South African/Rhodesian border was in flood & 
the driver of the car I was in went straight into the river
 pictured below. Miraculously we were not swept away. 
His mate behind us did the sensible thing and we had to
wait  two days before he could come across.

Those were the days when I sent my Mum in Cape Town a letter from Kenya saying: “You don’t need to send money. I’m getting 200 pounds a month in the Police Reserve and it only costs me 10 to live.”

Those were the days when those manning the Police post at 12 000 feet on Mount Kenya were a colourful bunch: Two White officers with Black privates – 16 Askaris. We were there to flush out the Mau Mau hiding in the jungle on the mountain.

This was the Regati Police post where I was stationed. It had
rudimentary fortifications consisting of a ditch all round it 
that was filled with sharpened wooden stakes. We only 
encountered one small Mau Mau group in the forest in the
 three months I was there.
*     *     *
 The Kenya Emergency or Mau Mau Revolt was described
as "one of the British Army's bloodiest and most 
controversial post-war conflicts." The Mau Mau led an
extremely violent rebellion against British rule that 
included terrible atrocities against it own people. 
The majority were members of the Kikuyu tribe. Only a
 mere 32 white settlers, mainly farmers, were murdered 
during the eight years of this reign of terror. On the 
other hand an estimated 1819 Kenyans were killed for 
refusing to take the Mau Mau oath, or for their tacit
acceptance of olonialism. Their most notorious 
massacre was in 1953 when they ordered everyone in the 
village of Lari into their huts and set fire to them. Those
who tried to escape were hacked to death with machetes
 

Those were the days when I could send my mother in Cape Town my passport from Kenya asking her to get me an Egyptian visa and within a couple of weeks I got it back complete with visa. And it wasn’t sent registered either way.

Those were the days when I paddled alone in a dugout canoe 700 miles down the Congo, the world’s deepest river, without a lifejacket when I could not swim.

My tiny dugout canoe

 At 22 you can’t be brave when you have no fear.

Those were the days when I would stop for the night to put up my tent in a clearing in the jungle where there was a village next to the river, only to find a family had moved out of their hut for me. I only had enough money for the simplest food, so the owner’s good deed went unrewarded, not that he showed any sign of wanting to be paid. It was Hospitality with the biggest H imaginable.

Those were the days when I arrived at a Catholic Mission in Spanish Rio Muni with malaria and left three days later- cured for free. Getting malaria had been inevitable because at night along that river the mosquitoes would be touching each other on the outside on my net.

Those were the days when I stayed at Dr Schweitzer’s hospital in Lambaréne` with a sense of awe only to be terribly disillusioned when I saw the way it was run was the antithesis of what I believed a hospital should be.

Those were the days when I spent Christmas day being shuttled for miles between trucks in a canoe through fields of crops flooded by the overflowing Lake Chad.

This was the canoe just behind a similar one that I was in

      Those were the days when a hitch-hiker was royally entertained by the District Commissioner at El Fasher, Sudan even though the entire nation was celebrating its actual Independence Day (1 Jan 1956) and the people were intent on flying their new flag.

Here's the letter I sent to my mother to which the District
                 Commissioner insisted on adding a postscript. (She kept all
               my letters, possibly as momentos in case I never came back)

      A year after leaving home I crossed the Mediterranean by ship from Tunis sitting right on the deck without as much as a scratch with my meagre belongings intact.

      My most memorable experience had taken me through 20 countries at a total cost of 200 pounds.

Was I really that Mad?

P.S. This is dedicated to all those fabulous people, who looked after me so well. More importantly they gave me an indelible impression of what this world could be like if we all followed their example. A very Big THANK YOU to you all, especially those of you with little or nothing to give except overnight accommodation in your HUT.