Al-Qalam 
My father, Dawood Wally Buckas (born 12 November 1936) to Rasoolan Bi and Mohamed Wally Buckas of 254 Dunbar Road Cato Manor, was one of 12 children. He passed away peacefully on Tuesday, 6 August 2024, of natural causes, having survived a triple heart bypass in 2007 and prostate cancer diagnosed in 2015.
My father attended Ahmedia School in Cato Manor and later Sastri College, and his sister, Mariam, fondly remembers that they were required as a daily routine to read the newspaper to their parents.
My father, who lived up to his name Wally (“the protecting friend”) notwithstanding the anglicised spelling, remained lifelong friends with his Sastri schoolmates (Ahmed Mansoor, a teacher and Deva Ravjee, who ran a medical practice in Merebank, serving the Clothing & Footwear Unions.
My father’s most abiding lesson from the two major health setbacks he suffered was to regard every day thereafter: “as a bonus”. Even though my father had given up smoking in early 1992 in preparation for Hajj, the damage to his cardiovascular system was obvious when he suffered a heart attack in December 2006 despite being fit and a regular long-distance walker.
He is most widely remembered in Kwa Zulu Natal for his role at the Durban office of the South African National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. He travelled throughout the province to facilitate awareness at educational institutions, as well as conducted employee assistance programmes in the workplace- on the various programmes and associated referral facilities available to support drug and alcoholism rehabilitation as a social disease of far-reaching impact. He still proudly sported his 1998 TADA T-shirt on his regular walks.
My father grew up in the liberal era of the Beatles. That open mindedness was what enabled him to ensure that our home was always open to our friends and neighbours alike. Our dining room served as the local library as my Dad had purchased an entire set of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica in 1977 and always had subscriptions to the newspapers and Readers Digest, which is how we were taught to read (starting at the comic section and working your way up to the more complex issues).
No one who needed a temporary respite from whatever difficulty they were facing at home was ever questioned about why they visited for so long or spent a night or two with us. It was accepted that your duty of hospitality could be stretched for at least three nights without question.
My father served on the school education committee of both Crescentridge and Risecliff High School. My Dad’s car was also the local taxi to R K Khan Hospital, and it was a given that our neighbours had a first right against you, after family. That sense of community lasted until my father’s recent demise at their residence in Silver Oak Mansions, Overport. All the neighbours knew my parents were open for a quick chat and a cup of tea or medical assistance from my mother, a retired nurse, who faithfully nursed my Dad during the last four years of what was a difficult journey following complications with an inguinal hernia that was inoperable due to his age. My father is survived by his sister, Mariam Bi Khan, and his wife of 60 years, Maymuna, and 3 children, Enver, Julie (Zuleikha Ismail) and myself, Rizia Buckas and 5 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
