Dame Kelly Holmes (Pic:BBC)
These pictures show the horrific moment Dame Kelly Holmes saw a child being sucked under a train and killed as she visited a poverty-stricken shanty town in South Africa.
The Olympic hero flew in to Khayelitsha - where children live in 10ft by 5ft shacks at the side of the railway line - on a mission for Sport Relief.
She was there to see how money raised by Britons running next week's Sport Relief Mile will go to provide hope for thousands of kids who have lost parents to Aids-related illnesses. They currently have to fend for themselves and scavenge rubbish heaps for food.
But just minutes after arriving, Kelly watched helplessly as three-year old Siyavu - who had darted across the tracks to get to his home - was hit by a train.
Talking for the first time about the tragedy near Cape Town, Kelly, 38, says: "It was the worst moment of my life. The pictures are still going through my mind.
"As soon as I arrived I was overwhelmed by what I was seeing. Families were so poor that they had no option but to live in these awful shacks at the side of the railway.
"Children were playing on the tracks while others were running across to reach their shacks. Trains were whizzing past every few minutes and kids were having to jump out of the way. It was terrifying.
"After a couple of minutes a train raced by and people started screaming. A little boy had gone under it.
"An ambulance arrived and people lifted the boy up into it while others started fighting and trying to get to the train driver.
"Stones were being hurled and within minutes there was a riot going on. I felt like I was standing in the middle of a movie. I stood at the door of the ambulance and the little boy was in such a bad way.
"His mother was in front of me on the floor sobbing. I broke down because I could not take in what I was seeing."
Siyavu died the following day in hospital. Kelly says the incident left her traumatised.
"I couldn't speak for days after it happened," she says. "It was bad enough having to see children live in those conditions. No water, no food, their toilets a hole in the ground.
"But to see a child die was too much to take. It just underlined to me how important it is that we must try to help people forced to live like this. It showed me why people must support Sport Relief."
More than half a million people are expected to join in the Sport Relief Mile next Sunday. Also known as the "people's mile", entrants can walk, skip or run and are sponsored to help raise money for good causes across the world. Competitors can choose to run over one, three or six miles.
This year's Sport Relief is expected to generate more than £18million and a lot of that money will be spent on causes in South Africa.
Of a population of 47 million, more than five million South Africans aged from 15 to 49 are living with the HIV virus, and a thousand are dying from Aids every day.
Hundreds of thousands of people live in the townships, where children have no education and parents have no skills to work.
Thousands of children are forced to survive on their own in shacks after being abandoned or losing their parents to HIV/Aids. During her trip, Kelly visited the Cape Town Child Welfare Trust where two women run a home for children rescued from the street.
She says: "The work there is inspiring. It is basically two women who have a van going into very hostile environments to rescue children. They take them back to a safe place and try to put them on the right path in life.
"During the visit we went to one shack where a child had been stabbed in the head with a screwdriver by her alcoholic father.
"We were able to take the child away and get her to hospital.
"These women only need a few thousand pounds a year to keep doing the amazing work they do. It is inspirational."
Retired runner Kelly - who won two gold medals in the 2004 Athens Olympics - said the trip has left her determined to continue working with Sport Relief in the future.
She says: "As I have seen myself, every day children are still needlessly dying somewhere in the world. Making that effort to run the mile will make that difference between life and death."
Kelly's trip to South Africa will be shown on Sport Relief night - this Friday on BBC1 from 7pm.
SPORT RELIEF
Sport Relief has raised £50million since it started.
Just £8.50 could pay for a month's basic provisions allowing an orphaned child in South Africa the chance to go to school.
A total of 423,000 people took part in last year's Mile. SIGN up for next Sunday's event at www.sportrelief.com
|
