Heartbreak after highway murder
2006-06-20 22:48
Cape Town - A young boy just couldn't bear standing next to his murdered godmother's coffin a minute longer.
Joshua Herselman, 12, godson of murdered Cape Town journalist Megan Herselman, 49, placed a long-stemmed yellow rose on the coffin before bursting into tears and walking away.
Herselman was shot dead en route to a guest house on a Johannesburg road a few days ago.
Black ribbons, attached to the clothes of mourners, spoke of the sorrow and anger of Herselman's friends and family.
Her sister and co-director of New Media Publishing, Naomi Herselman, had the ribbons made for every person at the funeral to wear to show they'd been touched by the crime wave.
Herselman advised victims of crime and their families to wear pieces of black cloth to show there was a crime crisis in South Africa.
Dominee Pieter Franszen said during the memorial service in a packed Tamboerskloof DRC: "Megan's death underlines the fact that there are people who have no respect for others and who will take a life for any reason whatsoever without batting an eyelid.
"This takes place while we have a wonderful constitution, which states clearly 'everyone has the right to live'."
Was always cheerful, full of life
Dr Augustine Shutte said the coffin draped with vines in autumn colours and white roses were a symbol of Herselman's presence.
He asked for a moment of silence so that mourners could "feel close to" Megan.
Media people and former pupils of Herselman (she was a teacher previously) consoled each other. Friends, some of them crying, sang her favourite hymn, Amazing Grace.
The managing director of New Media Publishing, Bridget McCarney, said in her eulogy that Herselman had always been "sunny, cheerful, full of life, loved to dance and wanted to be happy".
"Megan had a lot of goodwill and loved people, animals and plants."
McCarney said Herselman bought a cactus shortly before her death. She didn't mind the one she chose was half dead and that she was wasting her money, "because she knew which one needed her".
"She believed in angels and the question I now pose is whether she wasn't one herself."