On Broadhurst Cona's fifth night in the COVID-19 ward of a hospital in Cape Town, the patient in the bed next to him was giving up. The man gripped his own throat in panic as he choked, and he kept pulling off his oxygen mask. Cona pleaded with him to put it back on 1/6 
Early the next morning, Cona awoke to a commotion. The man’s bed was empty, and nurses in protective clothing were spraying it down with disinfectant. The man was sealed in a beige-colored body bag, and it took four people to lift him away to a passage leading to the lift 2/6
Cona didn’t know it yet, because his companion had been too sick to speak and his face unrecognizable with pain, but he had seen this man many times before, as an opponent on the rugby field 3/6
The two had played in rival Black neighborhood teams under apartheid’s racial segregation laws in the late 1960s. Cona had gone on to compete in international games with South Africa’s Black-only team over the following decade 4/6
Cona had last seen the dead man, Phakamile Maqhasho, at the funeral of a mutual rugby friend four years back. Cona only realized it was him in the bed next to him when a friend sent him a copy of his obituary 5/6
'I could be next': Now Maqhasho’s funeral would be next, and Cona felt like he had witnessed what his own death from COVID-19 might be like. Would he ever again see his daughter and his son? Read the full story reut.rs/3jYAxoF by @timcocks 6/6
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
