Cape reverend on hunger strike
A Cape Town reverend who is on a hunger strike is heading for her seventh day without food.
|||Cape Town - A Cape Town reverend who is on a hunger strike is heading for her seventh day without food.
On Sunday afternoon the 47-year-old Reverend June Major was too weak to stand and lay inside a small tent she’s called home since Tuesday.
“My legs are cramping, I feel nausea, my head aches and I’m short of breath,” she told the Daily Voice from the pavement outside Zonnebloem Primary School.
Major said she was expecting to meet with her former employer Bishop Garth Counsell and Archbishop of the Anglican Church in South Africa, Reverend Thabo Makgoba on Monday.
Major embarked on a hunger strike after she was allegedly labelled a trouble-maker by Counsell.
The disgruntled reverend said she applied for a job in Australia and Counsell wrote a letter to her new employers, allegedly bad-mouthing her.
“They are labelling me as a trouble-maker when a priest tried to rape me, one physically assaulted me and another knocked my son off his bike, yet I am the trouble maker,” she said.
“I’m hoping to see them [Bishop Counsell and Archbishop Makgoba] Monday but if they don’t come I will continue with my hunger strike,” she added.
Major said her last meal was a plate of sushi last Monday evening.
Since then she has had nothing but sips of water and juice to keep her sugar levels up.
Activist Aslam Toefy, who has come out in support of Major, says a doctor examined her on Friday when she nearly lost consciousness.
“Her sugar levels were on two so he [doctor] advised her to have some liquid,” he said.
“Since then she has been having little bits of Energade to keep her from going into a coma.
“She wants to be conscious when they come and explain to her why they did what they did.
“If she didn’t have a sip of liquid on Friday, she could have died in 12 hours.
“We averted death but she is still on the verge of getting pneumonia and she could also get kidney failure.
“If she doesn’t die of hunger she will die of pneumonia and they will have blood on their hands.”
Major, a mother of one, has only been in contact with her 21-year-old son and a handful of relatives via cellphone.
“I don’t want him [son] to see me like this so I just communicate with him on my phone,” she said.
“I also tried to keep this from my mother, but she found out and was very worried when she called me.
“I told her not to worry about me because I am fine.”
Daily Voice