This is the true story of how one man’s life was forever changed by the generous act of a loving woman who, in the presence of tragedy, gave him a chance to live.

Stoffel van den Berg was a white South African of Dutch decent.  Having been brought up in an apartheid environment, Stoffel firmly believed in the politics of the South African government.

Throughout his life, Stoffel excelled at whatever he did.  Being a highly disciplined and conscientious man, he always gave of his very best.  He excelled in sports and was awarded his Springbok colours for the forthcoming cricket tour between England and South Africa.

Then the unthinkable happened.  The English selection decided to include in the touring side, a coloured person whose name was Basil D’Olivera.  Basil was previously a South African who had immigrated to the United Kingdom because of the South African government’s refusal to allow him to play first class cricket on the basis that he was not a white man.

With D’Olivera’s inclusion in the English squad the Apartheid Government made their position known; only white players would be allowed to tour their country.  However, England refused to remove D’Olivera from the team and the tour was cancelled.

Stoffel was shattered by the decision and publically condemned the British.  He took every opportunity to criticize the world in their opposition to apartheid, calling Western politicians liberal weaklings.

“Why don’t you come to South Africa and see for yourselves how well-off our blacks are compared to their brothers and sisters in the rest of Africa?”  he said.

Stoffel was so supportive of the South African government and so passionate about the validity of separating black and white, that they used him to promote their interests.  He was an eloquent and influential speaker and it was not long before the National Party asked Stoffel to stand as a candidate in the constituency of Noordhoek, a suburb of the Cape Town area.

In one of his election speeches, Stoffel van den Berg said, “I’ll go to my grave knowing apartheid must be right, for blacks as well as for whites”.  The audience gave hin a standing ovation.  The date was August 18, 1989.

On his way home, Stoffel was involved in a serious motor car accident.  He had another engagement that night and, overtaking a slow-moving truck clipped the side of an oncoming car while swerving to avoid it.  Stoffel’s car overturned and landed at the bottom of an embankment.  The last thing Stoffel remembered, before waking up in hospital five weeks later, was the look of terror in the face of an oncoming driver.

Stoffel regained consciousness in the presence of his wife Inga.  “What happened?  Where am I?”  he asked.

“You’re in hospital following an accident, and lucky to be alive,” said Inga.  Later his surgeon confronted him with the fact that his heart had been damaged and had stopped beating.  It was pure luck that a person had been admitted to the hospital with fatal injuries and that his heart was available for transplantation.  Stoffel received the heart of this man.

“Who is this man?” demanded Stoffel.

“The donor was the driver of the other vehicle”, replied the surgeon.

“But … wasn’t he black?” cried Stoffel in shocked belief.

“Yes, he was”, confirmed his doctor.  But your body won’t know the difference between a black heart and a white heart.  The black man who died has given you a chance to live.

The surgeon went on to say that the wife of the dead man had agreed to donate her husband’s heart.  She had said to the doctor, “I can’t see the point of both of them dying.”

Over the next few weeks Stoffel steadily improved.  He pondered his life; it’s meaning and the fact that he was only alive because of the generosity of a black person.  He also acknowledged that if the tables were turned, he would never have agreed to save the life a black man by giving him the heart of a white man.  Such was his prejudice.

Six weeks Stoffel left the hospital a different person.  As soon as he could, he asked to see the widow of the man who had died in the accident:  the woman who had literally given him the chance to live.  When he arrived at her home in Crossroads, a shanty town on the outskirts of Cape Town, he found a young grieving black woman with a baby in her arms.

Stoffel awkwardly thanked her and asked her how he could help.  She wanted nothing.

A short while later Stoffel left the shack.  “I’ve been so blind”, he said to Inga.

“Not just you”, Inga said with tears streaming down her eyes.  “We all have.  But what can we do about it?”  she said.

“I don’t know,” replied Stoffel.  “I just know that I’ve got to make amends somehow”.

Over the next few days Stoffel and Inga discussed how they were to spend the rest of their lives.

Some time after Stoffel’s visit to his benefactors he resigned his position at Barclays Bank.  He cashed in his life insurances and decided, with the help of Inga, to devote the rest of his life to helping victims of apartheid – the system he had so actively promoted.

For the next four and a half years Stoffel van den Berg traveled to Crossroads every day setting up a small school where he taught English.  He also staked out a cricket pitch in the veld and coached the young boys in this sport.

Stoffel and Inga took every opportunity to make a difference in the lives of the disadvantaged people who lived at Crossroads:  they counseled people, visited the sick, donated money, food and provisions, and helped any way they could.  In the evenings they would walk the streets trying to persuade young people then, not to resort to crime, drugs or violence.  Where Stoffel had previously supported apartheid he now vigorously opposed it.

On 24 March 1994, Stoffel van den Berg died.  He did not live to see the birth of the new South Africa under Nelson Mandela.  Yet he had played his part in defeating apartheid.

More than 2 000 people attended the funeral of Stoffel van den Berg, many of whom had traveled great distances.  What was striking though was the extent to which Stoffel experienced a change of heart:  journalists could not decide whether there were more black or white people at Stoffel’s funeral.