Forced from his childhood home under apartheid, he spent half a century organising the people of Wentworth against the industrial giants that poisoned their neighbourhood. He closed a toxic landfill, won the Goldman Environmental Prize and never stopped fighting.
Shortly before six on the morning last Thursday, Desmond D'Sa left his home in Umzinto, on the KwaZulu-Natal south coast, for the Wentworth offices of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA). It was a drive he made regularly.
He had moved down the coast after having a leg amputated, and the road now took him out of the township he had defended for half a century and back into it each working day. His stepson, Rodney Stuart, and his sister-in-law, Patsy Bishop, were in the vehicle, with a granddaughter. IOL, the news site, reported that he was due to lead a protest at Eskom's Durban offices that day.
Near Umzinto the vehicle collided with a tractor and trailer. Reports differ on the sequence: some say it drove into the trailer and struck a crash barrier, others that the trailer came loose from the tractor and hit the vehicle. Stuart and Bishop died with him. His granddaughter was taken to hospital.
Desmond D'Sa, community organiser and winner of the 2014 Goldman Environmental Prize, was born in Cato Manor, Durban, on 13 June 1956. He died in the collision on 29 October 2026, at the age of 70. He was never...
