Footbridge
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About this ebook
There were many motivations for the Police walk undertaken in 1999/2000 not the least of which were personal and selfish. However the mugging of Roger Russell, the attempt on his life and theft of all of his equipment at a well-known squatter camp put the event on the International map. The young boys who tried to take from Roger gave us the walk. People and media from all over the world voiced their support and admiration for the idea and the man that would undertake it. With unexpected sponsorship from a large hotel chain and a string of equipment and food suppliers the walk was not only suddenly viable but very popular. The narrative is sometimes humorous, sometimes disturbing and always honest. It will lead you along the National highways of South Africa and introduce to you the villains and saints that live and work alongside of it. It will confirm the existence of apathy and despair at many of the service stations as well as the hope and creativity, and sometimes just plain old fashioned good management, at many others. This is not a work of fiction but a picture of the South African Rainbow Nation nine years on from Independence. The contradiction between the disaster prophesied for both Roger and the walk and the spirit that the public showed when encountering the message and the man will surprise you. Nobody who reads this book will come away with anything but a more positive vision of the future for this incredibly rich country and its wonderful people.
Roger Russell
Born in 1947 in Eldoret, Kenya Roger attended school in Bournemouth, UK and St David's College in Johannesburg, SA. Roger Russell fell into a long drop toilet when he was three years old, out of a car when he was four. He went on to almost drown himself at six, cut through his left leg when he was seven and crush his right arm when he was nine. By the time he was eleven he had spent over a year in hospital and had been the recipient of many hundreds of stitches. He was banned from playing soccer or rugby and could not run to save his life. He started in the mines at nineteen and lost his finger in an accident before a month had passed. He joined the U/G Rescue team and was gassed, trapped and lost underground within the space of a single year. Roger married in 1968 and is the father of four children by his first wife, Sharon, to whom he was happily married for twenty five years before she died of cancer in 1993. He has since remarried and lives with Cynthia on a 30 foot motor cruiser in Hermitage Marina near St Ives in the UK. They have one child, a boy named Gordon after Roger's father. In 1993, after the death of his wife, Roger walked from Beit Bridge on the Northern border of South Africa to Cape Town, a distance of 2000km. He slept alongside the road and walked alone and un-armed through one of the worst political times the country had ever seen. He saw then and has continued to see immense power in common people. In 1999 he walked right around South Africa to support a much maligned South African Police Services. He was mugged by a squatter camp gang, attacked by a policeman in a remote station in the Transkei and swept away in a flash flood in the Orange Free State. He has seen police barracks that were worse than some prison cells, met and spoken with criminals, saints and politicians. The British media called him a South African hero and Steve Tshwete, the South African Minister of Safety and Security at the time said he was truly a South African patriot. Roger has also walked in America on two occasions, promoting South Africa and cancer awareness to the people of California, Nevada, New Mexico and other states. Roger has written several books all of which he plans to publish with Smashwords in time.
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