Nuno Morais (left) and Morne
Swart, carrying their message
for change from Joburg to
Cape Town
The physios that kept Nuno on
the road after his knee issue
at a constant slant, and that caused problems in my
shins, which then crept up to my knee. I had a sport
massage and saw the physio, and then had to take
six days off completely. Right now I’m just walking,
but have still been averaging about 30km a day, and
today I upped it to 42. I hope to get back to 50 to
60km of running a day soon.”
Besides the knee issue, and in spite of lockdown
somewhat reducing the amount of vehicles on the
highways, Nuno says he has still had to contend
with too many close shaves with traffic. “It’s stressful
facing trucks coming at you at 100 kays an hour, so
I have tried to take a break from the N1 as much as
possible by running along dirt roads near the highway.
I had two really big scares on the R59, and had to
jump off the road completely both times. The first
was when I answered the phone, and when I looked
up, this guy was right on me. Similarly, going over the
Vaal, I was putting on the GoPro to make a video and
almost got hit by another guy. You need to keep your
eyes on the road at all times!”
“Meanwhile, Morne keeps an eye on me from
the car, all while he is busy editing media posts,
answering people’s questions, and planning meals
and accommodation. He’s the multi-tasking king, and
while I am taking physical strain, I know he is taking
a lot of mental strain, even though he’s ‘just sitting
in the car,’ as somebody said very unfairly in a social
media post the other day. Me, I just put on my music
and focus on the traffic...”
Dynamic Partnership
The other half of the #OurVoices duo jumps in here, in
his effusively boisterous way. “It’s been three weeks,
and I think we have developed a lot of respect for
each other – probably because we both know that we
don’t want to do what the other is doing!” says Morne.
“So here we are, a ‘Porra’ and a ‘Boertjie’ out on the
road together. We have very different personalities,
and I’m a difficult bloke – I’ll be the first to admit that –
but Nuno is dealing with it brilliantly, and we’ve gelled
together well. In fact, we’ve both said that we feel
more like brothers, now.”
“I feel very responsible for Nuno when he’s running.
He has two daughters waiting for him, so I am
responsible for making sure he gets home to them
safely. That includes making a call on whether a
road is too dangerous for running, especially when
we sometimes need to split up so that he can run
facing traffic while I am driving on the other side of
the road, or I need to push on ahead to wait for him
somewhere. But mostly, I’m just so proud of Nuno.
There have been days that he could hardly walk
because of that knee, but he still pushed through to
do 20 or 30 kays.”
Besides the running, driving and logistics, there is
another remarkable way that Morne and Nuno are
supporting each other. Both are recovering alcoholics,
who have used running to give themselves purpose,
direction and an outlet for their emotion. Morne is
also an addiction counsellor these days. “I was an
alcoholic for 16 years, and used to get drunk twice
a day, but I’ve been clean for two years now, since
August 2018,” he says. “So it means even more to
me to undertake this journey with a buddy who is
struggling with the same thing. But this run is not
about that, it’s about the women and children who are
being murdered each day.”
“The message here is that even two recovering
alcoholics, with all their inner demons and daily
struggles, can make a difference in this country,” adds
Nuno. “I believe that if you chuck a stone into a lake,
it causes ripples, which can become waves, and if
you put enough of those ripples together, eventually
you have a tsunami of change. So now we all need to
unite to bring about a wave of change in this country.”
Speaking for Those Silenced
The #OurVoices campaign is part of Morne’s
#ShutSADown campaign, which was born earlier
this year when he was horrified to hear the news
of yet another senseless violent murder of a young
girl in South Africa. “In February, little nine-year-old
Tazne van Wyk was murdered near Worcester. That
prompted me to start the #ShutSADown campaign, to
raise awareness of all the murders happening in South
Africa. Within a week we had 200,000 supporters
and followers, and we were the fastest-growing
group on social media, until Facebook reported us
for spamming people, because there were so many
invites to join the group going out,” says Morne.
“We’re now on 262,000 members, including 3500
international supporters in 82 countries, and I
specifically want to point out that we represent the
entire country – we’re not a farmer’s group, nor a
whites only group, and this is definitely not a hate
group! Our members are from all ethnicities, cultures
and language groups, inter-racial, with no particular
affiliation to any group. We just want to bring change
to this country, and we’re trying to avoid getting into
politics, even though it often creeps up on us in our
interaction with people.”
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