Kar Hao Teoh: tributes to ‘rising star’ British surgeon murdered in Cape Town

Colleagues have paid tribute to a surgeon from Britain who was shot dead while on holiday in Cape Town with his family after being caught up in strike-related violence.

Kar Hao Teoh, 40, was remembered as “a friend to many” at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, Essex. He had been awarded a number of international fellowships for his work as a trauma and orthopaedic consultant.

Teoh was driving near the city’s international airport in a rental car carrying his wife, Sara, and their two-year-old son, Hugo, when he turned into the notorious Nyanga township, where he was confronted by armed men who shot at the car.

“The deceased was in the driver seat of his vehicle with a gunshot wound to the head,” a policeman said. “Two passengers in shock [Sara Teoh and another relative travelling with the family] and an infant were already transported to hospital for medical treatment.”

Teoh was born in Singapore and moved to Britain to study at the University of Edinburgh.

Advertisement

In 2021, he won the Presidential Prize at the European Foot and Ankle Society conference in Lyons for his research into the treatment of ankle fractures. Teoh also worked in a private practice and a colleague at MSK Doctors, Professor Paul Lee, described him as a “guiding light in our professional community, a devoted friend and a cornerstone of many significant projects”. Other colleagues said he was “a kind, gentle person, a dedicated and talented surgeon and a rising star”.

Teoh and an on-duty police officer were among five people killed during days of unrest in South Africa’s second-largest city after the national union of minibus taxis called a strike in response to the impounding of vehicles by Cape Town’s authorities. Last week the Foreign Office issued a travel alert about the unrest.

The clashes came after police cracked down on illegal vehicles

ESA ALEXANDER/REUTERS

Angry protesters linked to the powerful industry which, in the absence of public transport, provides an essential service for the majority of the population, have pelted buses and cars with stones. Some buses, seen by taxi drivers as competition, have been burnt.

Violence has been a feature of the industry, which is used by 16 million passengers a day, since it emerged in the Eighties. Disputes over lucrative routes have often been settled by murder.

The Teoh family were travelling on the N2 motorway towards the airport on the evening of Thursday August 3, the first day of the action when they turned into Nyanga, one of the country’s worst hotspots for gangs and violent crime. The N2 has been targeted by protesters attempting to barricade the road.

The disruption has forced schools to close, interrupted deliveries to shops and factories and forced workers to stay at home in fear of reprisals.

The taxis’ national union has said that its members are not instigating the violence and others are using the strike as an excuse to begin their own protests.

Nyanga is one of South Africa’s oldest black townships, home to more than half a million people mostly living in shacks made of corrugated iron, cardboard and wood. The vast sprawl is one of the first sights for visitors leaving the airport. Nyanga also helps account for South Africa’s murder statistics: there are an average of 74 a day across the country, with guns the most common weapon. Nyanga is rarely out of the country’s top three most violent police districts.

Advertisement

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex visited a charity in the township during their tour to South Africa in 2019. Western Cape province, which includes Cape Town, has taken a tough stance on the unregulated minibus taxi industry.

In most parts of the country, a blind eye is turned to reckless driving and unroadworthy vehicles, but the authorities in Western Cape — the only one of South Africa’s nine provinces not run by the African National Congress (ANC) — are trying to clean up the sector.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex visit an NGO in Nyanga during their visit in 2019

BETRAM MALGAS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Cape Town’s approach has been called arrogant by Sindisiwe Chikunga, the ANC government’s transport minister, who said that the impounding of taxis was unlawful.

However, Geordin Hill-Lewis, Cape Town’s mayor, from the Democratic Alliance party, said: “In Cape Town, violence will never be tolerated as a negotiating tactic. We reiterate our call on Santaco [the taxi union] to return peacefully to the negotiation table.”

He added that the impounding of several thousand vehicles was legal under the National Land Transport Act.