‘I still walk, I still eat, I still talk’
If you remain in a state of peace you will live longer, Joost van der Westhuizen — not quite on his deathbed yet as the BBC reported this week — tells Carlos Amato
“I’M a machine,” said Joost van der Westhuizen this week. “I still walk, I still eat, I still talk. My quality of life is brilliant. Every morning and every night I’m grateful to be alive.”
Even machines have technical problems, though, and the Bok legend recently fell while walking at home — he uses a wheelchair much of the time — and gashed his head. His reaction recalled the near-pathological hardness of the Van der Westhuizen of old: he slapped a piece of toilet paper on the wound, stuck a cap over it and headed off to a scheduled meeting. For the man who famously felled Jonah Lomu while nursing a broken rib, a modest hole in the head is no reason to make a fuss.
Not everyone is as untroubled as Van der Westhuizen about his affliction with motor neuron disease. The recent hullabaloo about Nelson Mandela’s health has apparently failed to bring global media to the realisation that the sensible cue to mourn someone is not the suggestion of an increased likelihood of his or her death, but the verifiable popping of the clogs in question. Because we are all likely to die at some point, and Van der Westhuizen is no exception.
This week, following a telephone interview, the BBC reported that he was “on his deathbed”, sparking alarm in South Africa. But the Beeb used a slightly broken telephone, because on Thursday a visibly undead Van der Westhuizen travelled from Pretoria to Brits to pay a surprise visit to a fellow motor neuron disease sufferer, Elize van Vuuren, 60.
“What I said to the BBC reporter was misinterpreted,” said Van der Westhuizen, whose speech is slurred and halting. “I told them that I’m living each day as if it’s my last, which is a cliché but it’s true. I realise that I have a fatal illness, so it’s almost like being on my deathbed.”
The Sunday Times joined Van der Westhuizen at the home of Van Vuuren and her husband Koos. He was accompanied by Nathania de Kock, marketing manager of his charity, J9, which promotes awareness of the disease, and his older brother Pieter, who counsels those diagnosed with it.
The couple were moved to tears by the visit. Van derWesthuizen urged Van Vuuren to eat a lot, get out and socialise, keep walking and talking, and keep flexing and stretching her hands. The secret of fighting the advance of motor neuron disease is to “use it or lose it”. Functions will go eventually, but Van der Westhuizen has shown that the process can be delayed — three years ago, he was given two years to live, and he is still breathing well.
Elize also received a cheque for R5 000 from J9, which has supported 23 beneficiaries to date, including the former Bok centre Tinus Linee, who also has motor neuron disease. J9’s target is to visit and support 40 beneficiaries by the end of the year.
It takes a little while to understand Van der Westhuizen’s impaired speech, but he does not hold back: he is almost as garrulous as he was in his bolshy prime. He cracked ribald jokes to lift the Van Vuurens’ mood. At the end of the visit, he wondered aloud whether the couple would be making an erotic detour to their bedroom after their guests had left.
“It’s the most incredibly humbling feeling to be able to help others in my situation,” said Van der Westhuizen. “It gives me so much energy. We’re living; we have a lot to do. When you’re diagnosed, the doctor gives you the idea that your life
It’s the most incredibly humbling feeling to be able to help others in my situation
is over, and it’s just not true.”
It is strange to see a once mighty body reduced to weakness and near-stillness. His shoulders have narrowed and his neck and arms are spindly. His hands are their old size: big enough to secure a rugby ball in the crook of an elbow and weave a route through a forest of forwards. (Remember that hunched, wolfish gait that al- lowed him to burst under tackles rather than through them, despite his height?)
But inside his atrophied envelope Van der Westhuizen is all there. He laughs often — a hooting, nerdy guffaw — and his clear eyes still resemble little Polaroids of the Antarctic ice shelf. “I told Elize that it’s so important to always keep a positive attitude in fighting the disease, not an attitude of hatred or bitterness,” he said. “If you remain in a state of peace, you will live longer.”
It is easy to dismiss this as pop-psychology claptrap, but when you are staring oblivion in the face, it is your only recourse. And being a year late ( and counting) for his own predicted exit, the former security guard is arguably vindicating his theory.
His illness rattles South Africans more than it should. Maybe this is because his descent into dignified, courageous helplessness disturbs our culture’s false conviction that male strength and fatherhood can and must be guaranteed by physical force — just as his adultery and cocaine-snorting a few years ago punctured the oftenpunctured myth of the morally pure sports hero.
But Van der Westhuizen has no duty to preserve popular delusions. His life defies both prurient moralism and maudlin pity; it is neither a tragedy nor a morality tale. He is simply a tough, weary machine, resisting the growing disobedience of his parts. One day, a vital cog will finally say “enough” and he will accept that his game is over.
But really, if Van der Westhuizen is on his deathbed, then so are we all.