Fundraiser gig for boy
|Published
NEEDS OP: Abdul with mom Tasneem. Picture: Supplied NEEDS OP: Abdul with mom Tasneem. Picture: Supplied
Cape Town artists are putting their money where their mouths are at a fundraising concert for a three-year-old boy who needs a life-changing operation.
Abdul Hakim Madumo survived a near drowning last year and has been left with partial brain damage.
His mother Tasneem Swartz, 31, who also has a one-year-old son, recalls the day her son nearly died in the pool of their Parow home.
“I took him for swimming lessons still on that morning of 21 October. He hated it, he never liked swimming,” the single mom says.
“The afternoon he was running around, playing like any other two-year-old by the pool, next minute we found his lifeless body floating.”
She says her sister took him out while their mom administered CPR, but the boy did not respond.
They rushed him to hospital where doctors managed to get a heartbeat and pulse.
But their “darkest days” still lay ahead when Abdul Hakim would suddenly turn blue and get spasms.
He is better now, and in June will undergo a stem cell operation which may help him gain more bodily and brain functioning.
INITIATIVE: Shadley Schroeder. Picture: Supplied
But it costs R200 000 and this is where actor and singer Shadley Schroeder stepped in.
“I don’t know Hakim and we never even met before, but his story has touched me and I knew I’d have to do something, so I messaged all my friends and asked them to be part of a show and got kwaai responses,” he says.
Shadley, Krista Jonas, Neesha Abrahams, Madeegha Anders, Protégé, Family Affair, comedians Phil de Lange and Yaaseen Barnes and loads more will perform at the Bellville Civic Centre on 6 March at 8.30pm and tickets cost R100.