South African great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, and South African community activist; Satish Dhupelia, succumbed to COVID-19 complications here on Sunday. This happened three days after his 66th birthday, a family member said.
Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie, Satish Dhupelia’s sister, confirmed that her brother had died of COVID-19 related complications; after he contracted the disease in a hospital, where he had been under treatment for a month due to pneumonia.
SATISH DHUPELIA DIES OF COVID-19
“My beloved brother has passed on after a month of illness with pneumonia, a superbug contracted in hospital and then COVID-19 also contracted while he was being treated. He suffered a major cardiac arrest this evening,” Uma stated this in a social media post.
Besides Uma, Satish Dhupelia has another sister, Kirti Menon, who lives in Johannesburg, where she is active in various projects, in the memory of the great Gandhi.
The three siblings are descendants of Manilal Gandhi, who Mahatma Gandhi left behind in South Africa to continue his work, after spending two decades and had returned to India.
Dhupelia, who spent most of his life in the media; as a videographer and photographer, was also very active in upholding the Gandhi Development Trust, adding more value to the work Ghandi has started, at the Phoenix Settlement near Durban.
He was renowned for assisting the needy in all communities and was active in a number of social welfare organizations.
Tributes poured in from his friends and dear ones. “I am in shock. Satish was a great humanitarian and activist,” Politician analyst Lubna Nadvi said. “He was also a great friend of the Advice Desk for Abused Women, and always assisted the organization in whichever way he could,” Nadvi added.
Dhupelia was also a member of the Board of the 1860 Heritage Foundation, which on Monday November 16 commemorated the arrival of the first indentured laborers from India to work on the sugar cane fields of Durban, South Africa.
On one of his last Facebook posts for which Dhupelia was renowned, especially for his humor, he wrote: “Let us also not forget that we still need to stand together to achieve our final goals of equality for all and an eradication of poverty”.
Satish Dhupelia was born on November 19, 1954.
Funeral arrangements of Dhupelia have not been announced yet.
