Additional word has surfaced on the circumstances surrounding the death of this young woman, a month after our group met her in the Gambia.

Initially, it was an unexpected tragedy. There are signs and suggestions now of something much, much worse.

Last month, I wrote in this space about the untimely death of a young South African woman I met in the Gambia during the International Roots Festival in February.

We knew her as Xandi.

A video has surfaced on YouTube that has both filled in some details about her life and death. It also has raised some disturbing questions.

It gives her actual name as Zandile Mthembu. “Zandi” for short. (Our Gambian hosts spelled it “Xandi,” which, for better or worse, is how I am always likely to remember her.)

It identifies her as an activist, advocating on behalf of women and youth in southern Africa.

It also says that on March 5, her body was found hanging in a hotel room in Senegal, and that authorities have officially declared her death a suicide.

The video states repeatedly that her family and friends absolutely do not believe that she took her own life.

You can watch the video for yourself. If you can’t sit through the entire 15 minutes, don’t worry. You’ll get the gist of it pretty quickly.

When you spend 41 years as a journalist, you learn a little about suicide.

You learn that people despairing enough to take their own life may sometimes be adept at hiding their pain from others, even those closest to them, but that they usually don’t.

You learn that the family and friends of the victim can easily plunge deep into denial, even after the deed is done.

You also learn not to put overwhelming faith in your own observations of people you’ve only just met.

Even so, I have been around my share of suicidal people. There are warning signs, many of them associated with depression. Low self-esteem. Indecisiveness, anxiety, chronic fatigue, expressions of hopelessness, talk of dying, alcohol or drug use, loss of interest in things, an inability to focus.

In her short time in our presence, if you read my previous blog post, you know that Xandi showed none of that. To date, I’ve yet to talk to anyone who knew Xandi who believed she was in any way suicidal.

And for the record, neither do I.

There are still a great many missing pieces to this puzzle, and I don’t know if they’ll ever be found. Anything else I learn in the future will be reported to you here.

POSTSCRIPT
The video mentioned above has since been taken down from YouTube, for reasons unknown to me so far.

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