South African Indian recalls the papal blessing

A South African Indian has mixed memories of the late Pope John Paul II's visit to neighbouring Lesotho in 1987.

A South African Indian Muslim businessman here has mixed memories of the late Pope John Paul II's visit to neighbouring Lesotho in 1987.

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Ramesh Hassan said he had been requested to make arrangements to tackle an expected crowd 300,000. He suffered a 1.5 million rands loss as less than 20,000 people turned up.

Hassan, also a popular part-time stage artist here, had spent a decade building up his catering business in Lesotho - a tiny state closed in on all sides by South Africa. Because of its apartheid policies then, the Pope would not visit South Africa. So more than three million Roman Catholics were expected to flood into Lesotho for a glimpse of the Pope.

The pontiff had come there as part of the process to elevate a priest buried there, Father Gerard, to sainthood following reports that a three-year-old blind girl regained her sight using sand from the priest's grave.

"The Lesotho government asked me to intervene to help cope with the expected influx," Hassan told IANS from the restaurant he now runs here. He said he had made arrangements for about 300,000 people after he regarded the government's figure of three million people as being unrealistic.

"There was only one hotel that could take maybe 500 people, so I hired out every available tent in South Africa to create a massive tent city to accommodate about 200,000.

"One of my partners imported a million bottles of water. Another friend and reputed South African Indian chef, Solly Manjra, shipped in truckloads of sausages, chickens and other products to ensure that the expected masses were fed. In the end most of the food rotted away."

Hassan himself invested in a range of memorabilia with the Pope's image, only to find himself saddled with huge unused stocks.

The reason for the failure of the project was not that the Pope did not arrive, but that only a single busload of 67 people arrived from South Africa to see him after the government there refused to allow too many vehicles to enter Lesotho.

"In the end, there was an audience of about less than 20,000 people, most of them locals."

Forced to leave Lesotho and return to his native Durban to start life afresh with his family, Hassan said he has no regrets about the episode.

"The Pope gave me his blessing, and the whole thing was like taking over a small country for a short while as I set about making all the logistical arrangements. You cannot buy that sort of experience with any amount of money."

Hassan said the blessing of the Pope probably worked when he tried to recover some of his investment a year later at the country's biggest consumer fair, the Rand Easter Show in Johannesburg.

"For the first four days, I stood there exhibiting all these items with the Pope's image and nobody from the thousands bought any. Some even made rude signs at me, perhaps because I was a Muslim.

"Then, on the fifth day, a gentleman with a foreign accent came over and negotiated a deal for all my stock. Initially I thought he was joking, but it turned out that the Pope would be visiting his country Seychelles and he wanted to take the items there."

Although he managed to recover only a small part of his initial investment, the sale allowed Hassan a fresh start. "It was like a miracle of its own!"