Cape Town - It's a refrain he keeps repeating: "I am busy dying. I'm a dead man walking. All I want, is to build a relationship with my children."
This is what former Springbok rugby player Joost van der Westhuizen said in an article in the latest edition of Huisgenoot in which he speaks about his demise due to motor neurone disease (MNS).
His speech and movement has already been affected and his close friend and partner, Quinton van der Walt, must now help him dress.
In addition to stem cell treatment and a course of heavy metal detox injections, he is also being treated by a biokineticist and a physiotherapist. He knows it will not stop the disease, but he hopes it will give him strength for a while longer.
'I now live my life fully'
On recent questions regarding how the finances of his J9 Foundation, which he established to help MNS patients, are being managed, Van der Westhuizen sayd he doesn't have access to a cent.
He makes several allegations about his wife Amor Vittone in the article.
The couple is divorcing due to a breach of "trust", among other things, when Amor toured through the country with other musicians in 2005.
The sex video in which he appears with another woman was, according to him, filmed in 2006 when he was in a "very dark place" in his life.
About people who are still judging him, he says: "If I sit and brood about what every person out of seven billion people say about me, I'll die tomorrow. I know what's going on in my heart. I now live my life fully. If I want to have a drink, I do it. If I want to sleep, I sleep. If I want to go visit friends, I do that. I am not going to sit in a corner and die.
"I don't give a damn what people say about me. I am tired of the fact that my life is being determined by society. I paid my debt."
SOURCE : NEWS 24
