Profile: Abu Asvat

Pofile: ABU ASVAT — The quiet humanitarian who taught everyone a lesson in transcending ideological differences.

Dr Abu-Baker Asvat had not finished his life’s work when he was gunned down in his Soweto surgery last weekend. Asvat enunciated his life vision in a lengthy acceptance speech in Lenasia last year; he had been voted joint-winner of The Indicator newspaper’s Human Rights Award.

He urged the people of Lenasia to break down the artificial racial, economic, residential and economic barriers that separated them from neighbouring Soweto. He deplored the fact that many homeless people had to find shelter under bridges between the two townships.

Last Saturday afternoon, Asvat was laid to rest in the shadow of a bridge near the cemetery between Lenasia and Soweto. An assassin had done what Asvat expected — and many of his friends feared. Asvat had been threatened regularly by rightwing vigilante types in Soweto. They had told him to get out of the township or else they would get him.

But the 46-year-old humanitarian refused to give in. He and his nursing assistant, Albertina Sisulu, were too committed to helping the poor, many of whom received free treatment and medication. It was a fascinating partnership, this team of Asvat, health secretary of the Azanian Peoples Organisation, and Sisulu, co-president of the United Democratic Front and wife of jailed African National Congress leader Walter Sisulu.

Time and again, the two were questioned about this, since Azapo and the UDF are supposed to be at sometimes violent odds, especially in parts of Soweto. Sisulu spoke eloquently about it as she heaped praise on the Lenasia doctor. But she is restricted and cannot be quoted. Asvat himself said he had long ago transcended ideological differences.

The two handed out a lesson in what our country can do when we share a common purpose. Their common purpose was to give medical and other assistance to the poor, the helpless, the victims of an ideologically uncaring bureaucracy.

Asvat’s work among the homeless squatters in Soweto and Lenasia was legendary and rarely publicised. The Azapo health team of doctors, nurses and social workers from Lenasia, Eldorado Park and Soweto regularly visited rural areas where it provided free treatment and medication, and referred more serious cases to hospital.

Sisulu was ”absolutely devastated” by the assassination, as were his family, his wife and three children. So were officials of Azapo. So were members of Crescents Cricket Club of which he was president. So were members of the SA Council on Sport-affiliated Cricket Association of the Transvaal, of which he was vice-president, and the Transvaal Council of Sport.

So were members of the Health Workers Association, of which he was a founder. So were members of the People’s Education Committee (Lenasia), of which he was chairman. So were members of the medical fraternity. So were friends and neighbours, who remembered a deeply caring, compassionate humanitarian.

So was Winnie Mandela, whose doctor he was and with whom he had set up clinics in Brandfort when she was banished to the Free State town. So were members of the National Council of Trade Unions, whom he helped plan health centres in outlying areas. Most of all, it was the squatters, the homeless, the victims of apartheid, who mourned the assassination of ”the people’s doctor’.

Among the mourners at his funeral on Saturday afternoon at his Lenasia home were rich and poor, old and young, Muslim and non-Muslim, priests and maulanas, nuns and nurses, Azapo members and UDF members, Cosatu and Nactu officials, black people and white people. Asvat — nicknamed ”Hurley” after a soccer player of the 1950s — fought bureaucrats and perpetrators of apartheid with a quiet dignity.

Officialdom hounded him and Sisulu. The pair moved their rooms to a house in Rockville. In December, the water supply and electricity were cut off. They carried on regardless. Every so often — sometimes in the middle of the night — I would get a call from somebody saying so-and-so had been evicted from Soweto or elsewhere, and had put up coarse shacks in the veld.

Instinctively, I would contact Asvat. Without a word of complaint, he would immediately visit the victims, in an hour or two organise tents for them and instruct us to contact some grocery outlets to donate food. He would examine the victims, refer them to hospital if necessary and contact those who could help with legal and other work.

Yet we took it all for granted. ”Hurley is doing his thing,” we would say and hardly take notice. But the people did notice, as was evident at his funeral. The authorities also noticed. He was detained, his home was raided, he was called a ”trouble-maker’.

Rightwing politicians in Soweto also noticed. Exactly two years ago, he escaped an attack by two knife-wielding men. He shouted and Sisulu ran screaming to neighbours for help. The attackers fled. ”It was the closest I’ve come to staring death in the face. But I won’t be deterred from continuing to serve the community,” he said.

Asvat told how one day last year, a rightwing Soweto politician came to his surgery and warned him to get out. Then one afternoon, a man who pretended to be a patient warned him as well. The man pulled out a gun. At that moment, a patient walked in, the man fled, but shouted that be would get Asvat.

Now Asvat is a martyr. But our grief for the man is transcended by the hopeless sense of outrage we feel about the murder of a true humanitarian.