Brother Desmond D’Sa (1956 – 2026)

Writing about the passing of family members or friends is not my fort. I experienced deep grief at the loss of my father (1995) and my mother (2007). I experienced excruciating grief at the passing of two of my brothers. Recently a close cousin, a medical doctor, passed after a relatively brief illness.

The sudden passing of Desmond D’Sa jolted me in a rather tough way. My wife and I spent some hours with him in Durban SA late July 2026. Despite the encumbrances of moving in a wheelchair, he was as full of energy as he had ever been. He came to see me twice and was upbeat about how the youths must push environmental justice campaigns with new tools and vigour. Our discussions ranged from the vital need for renewable energy to be installed in underserved communities, to what should be the strategic focus of the annual general meeting of Oilwatch Africa that was coming up in Namibia in September. Although neither of us was going, Des called frequently until he got assurances that plans were solid and that the delegation from Durban would have a good reason to travel there. He wanted every resource invested to yield worthwhile outcomes.

We also reminisced on the founding days of the FishNet Alliance which was birthed in 2017 through joint efforts of Health of Mother Earth Foundation and South Durban Community Environmental Alliance. We talked about a protest action we carried out in Durban that year when fisher folks were blocked off certain fishing grounds on the coast of Durban. We made plans to go out for lunch and maybe to visit his home at Umzinto as he had moved there. His house at Umzinto had had better accessibility than his third floor apartment at Wentworth, Durban. Many kids in his neighbourhood in Durban had to pack asthma pumps along with their lunch boxes when heading to school. The pollution was that bad. Little wonder he fought the polluters with everything he had.

With Des outside SDCEA office in 2019

Just before we departed from Durban, Des sent Tristan, his grand son, to track us down to groundWork’s office where we had gone to see Bobby Peek, another long time friend, with whom we had undertook toxic tours of South Durban with their highly polluting refineries, petrochemical plants, paper mill and sundry industrial plants. Tristan brought my wife and I some campaign t-shirts and other materials to memorialize our visit to Durban. Who would have known that those were the last gifts from this giant of a man?

I have a number of friends in South Africa, but Des was more than just a friend. He was a brother. He was an instigator of thoughts and plans on how to hold polluters to account and allow poor communities to breathe. He was all out for taking campaigns to primary and high schools to inspire a new generation of environmental justice activists. He was a man in a hurry. Whatever needed to be done had to be done. I had a sense that the urgency in his campaigns intensified after he had a leg amputated and got discharged from hospital in January 2026. Besides campaigning for environmental justice, Des, though a Catholic, was always eager to introduce me to evangelical and Pentecostal pastors in his neighbourhood and to go together to church. He was a well rounded man.

Des touched lives. He was a fighter. He stood with migrants and was solidly against xenophobic attacks. He stood with people and communities in their fights for environmental justice. Besides other accolades, his leadership in the campaign against the hazardous waste landfill at Bulbul Drive in Chatsworth earned him the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2014 for Africa. In July 2026 he was granted the award of Excellence by the Premier of KwaZulu-Natal for exceptional climate change programmes.

It is hard to think of him in past tense, but that is the reality. His passing is more tragic by being caused by a truck, a highway monster, that also snatched the lives of his son, Rodney,and a sister in-law, Madam Patsy. Can we find another Des? The answer must be yes. We see him in the faces of the boys and girls, men, women and the very air of the communities he aligned with in the struggle for dignity and safety. With that assurance we hold up his family and everyone in the arena of struggles against extractivism and colonial exploitation.

With Des, July 2026