“In life, one of South Africa’s most prolific and celebrated historians, novelists and translators, Karel Schoeman, was notoriously hermetic, shunning most contact with the outside world. Schoeman, who worked as an archivist at the National Research Library before he retired, led a rich inner life, populated by little-known voices and characters of South African history whom he honoured in his delicate, accomplished writings. But Schoeman’s self delivery – or suicide – on Monday at the age of 77 has once again opened the debate about the legal right to die with dignity in South Africa. He wanted it that way”. By Marianne Thamm: first published on 4/5/2017 in Daily Maverick.
Dying with Dignity: Karel Schoeman – a private life, a public death
Original Photo: Karel Schoeman (Netwerk24)
Excerpts from the article
Prolific and versatile, Karel Schoeman wrote 19 collections of prose and some 46 works of non-fiction, biography, historical writing, autobiography and travel, covering 300 years of South African history and establishing a unique and engaging style of interpreting this past. He wrote, like some of his characters, for those who could not.
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His works of fiction, while often engaging with the past and history, were also about the inner journey of the protagonists within a specific geographical and historical landscape.
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Schoeman was a maverick, a man outside of his time. After matriculating from Paarl Boy’s High in 1956 he obtained a BA degree in languages from the University of the Free State. Then, in 1961, Schoeman joined the Franciscan Order in Ireland as novice for the priesthood, but returned to Bloemfontein to obtain a Higher Diploma in Library Studies in 1983. Prior to this he had worked as a nurse in Glasgow and a librarian in Amsterdam.
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Schoeman, who was born in Trompsburg in the Free State in 1939, died in the Noorderbloem retirement home in Bloemfontein. He was 77 years old. In a letter to his lawyer, composed on 27 April and simply titled “Statement”, Schoeman set out how he had long planned to end his life before he grew too old, as well as his thoughts on his right to die with dignity in South Africa. He noted that in contemplating ending his own life he had been surprised at the extent of the moral and practical support he had received.
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In his farewell, Schoeman dispassionately writes that the decision to end one’s life was a “highly personal” issue that he would not “blindly” recommend. He explains that current South African law made provision for a Living Will which directed medical personnel not to intervene in a life-threatening situation.
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He adds that he had become aware over the past two years that the research and writing that had kept him occupied for so long had become a burden and that he had “with a certain amount of relief” begun to distance himself from this. During this process, says Schoeman, he had grown acutely aware of his physical and spiritual decline.
“What lies ahead for me, in terms of my humanity, and in all likelihood, is an increasing condition of helplessness and dependence during which I will become a burden to myself and others.”
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In December 2016 the Supreme Court of Appeal overturned a 2015 High Court Ruling granting the terminally ill lawyer, Robin Stransham-Ford, the right to die with dignity by way of euthanasia. The overturning of the ruling upholds the country’s current laws rendering assisted suicide a criminal offence.
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Professor Sean Davison, chair of DignitySA, has continued to lobby for the amendment of South African law with regard to the right to die with dignity.
Earlier this month Davison posted on Facebook that he had spoken at a medical symposium in Cape Town attended by over 100 medical doctors.
“The title of my presentation was ‘The right to die with dignity’. I was expecting a cool response from the audience since it is a pattern throughout the world that doctors are reticent on the subject of assisted dying. To my surprise, when I polled the audience, 80% were in favour of changing the law to allow for assisted dying for the terminally ill.
However, even more surprising, after I had presented my talk, was that at least 50% of the doctors supported assisted dying for those with ‘unbearable suffering’. Having doctors supporting our campaign for a law change is crucial to its success – I am now confident that we can get them on board throughout the country.”
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His legacy exists not only in the fiction or grand historical accounts he wrote, but also in the reanimation of individuals, both well-known and obscure, whose forgotten lives he encountered in the archives and who he thrust back into public view. Schoeman is one of the country’s most important historians whose work exhorts us to take heed of the past.