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Wednesday, 24 May 2017

A loving tribute penned by Donna in memory of her Tom (Part 1)



On 18 May 2017, my beloved husband, Tom Wheeler, went into went into cardiac arrest about 6 AM and died a few minutes later. He had been in Intensive Care at Rosebank Clinic in Johannesburg for the past 10 days, battling multiple infections and other issues after a year of declining health. Part of what some follows comes from my own memories of our time together; part from a CV Tom had prepared himself (although I’ve tried to humanize some of the austere document language). The time elements jump around a bit, but the dates should provide context.

Tom was born in Cape Town on 27 October 1938. He graduated from the University of Stellenbosch in 1959, and after a year as a government translator, joined the South African Foreign Service in 1961.

During his forty-two year career as a South African diplomat he served in Washington (twice 1963/8, 1988/9 – the latter as Minister/Deputy Chief of Mission); Blantyre, Malawi; London; Sydney, Australia; New York (Consul-General). His last foreign posting was to Ankara, Turkey (1997- 2001) as Ambassador to Turkey, and as non-residential Ambassador to Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

In between foreign postings, Tom served as Chief Director: Global Security, Disarmament and Arms Control and also in other disciplines such as Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, and the Environment, Science and Technology for various periods between 1993 and 1997. 

He was involved in developing a procedure for the vetting of applications for arms sales abroad and the initial stages of the drafting of a White Paper on peacekeeping policy. 

Between 1990 and 1997 he was closely involved in various aspects of the process of the transition to democracy, transformation of the South African foreign service, and the return of South Africa to the UN and other multilateral organizations. This last issue resulted in Tom sitting in the presidential chair in the UN General Assembly during a debate on renewing the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. It was a privilege he cherished in his memory.

Tom was also a member of South African delegations to a variety of international conferences, including: the UN Conference on Population and Development, Cairo, 1994; the OAU Special Ministerial Meeting in Cairo in 1995; President Mandela’s delegation to the UN General Assembly in 1994; the NPT Review and Extension Conference in New York in 1995 (de facto leader); and the Central Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Conference in Tashkent in 1997.

He visited India (including Bangalore) in November 1996 as a member of Deputy President Mbeki’s delegation and headed the bilateral political discussions as part of the Joint Commission meeting in New Delhi.

Over the years, Tom also traveled extensively in Africa: Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, Madagascar, Kenya, Ethiopia, Cote d’Ivoire, Uganda, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and more recently Sudan and Ghana.

Tom and I met in Ankara, Turkey (where I was teaching in the Department of Culture and Literature at Başkent University) and we were married there in 2000. The short version of the story, which he loved to tell, was “We met at church, drank tea, and got married.” There were, of course, many chapters between tea and marriage, and many more stories as well.

During this time, Tom and I travelled extensively in Central Asia and in the Middle East – Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Syria and Northern Cyprus – sometimes for work; sometimes for pleasure. And there were many more travels to follow.

One of Tom’s great joys was going somewhere he’d not been before. He loved traveling by car and rated a holiday by the proportion of time spent in the car versus out of it. More time in meant more places he could see. I saw (more or less) 7,000 km of South Africa in 10 days the first time I visited this magnificent county.

In 1977 and 1979 he was a member of the South African delegations to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative meetings in London and Washington, the negotiation of the Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resources (CRAMR) in Washington in 1979 – adopted but never ratified.

He was a member of the South African delegation that adopted the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, CCAMLR, in Canberra in 1980, and is a South African signatory to the Convention. He was a member of the South African delegation to the inaugural meeting of the Commission in Hobart, Tasmania in 1982Hobert, Tasmania in 1982 and agaiHobH and at the meeting in 1986. He led the South African delegation to the 18th Antarctic Consultative Meeting in Kyoto, Japan in 1994.

One of the highlights of Tom’s career was to go to Antarctica aboard the SA Agulhas during the 1983 summer season. The trip included the SANAE III base and the newly established German base Georg von Neumayer.

Antarctica had been a life-long interest for Tom, and amongst the 8000 or so books in our house at the moment, many are on Antarctica. This interest culminated in research paper on South Africa’s involvement in Antarctica paper. Written jointly with Elizabeth Sidiropoulos (Chief Executive of SAIIA), it is entitled “To the Ends of the Earth: Antarctica, the Antarctic Treaty and South Africa. (RESEARCH REPORT 23, March 2016).


Tom also delivered an address on Antarctica and the Blue Economy at a conference jointly hosted by the Institute for Global Dialogue and DIRCO at the Department in Pretoria in 2014

Donna Wyckoff-Wheeler
Johannesburg, 19 May 2017

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