Jochen Radel (5A, 1971) died tragically on 19 August 2013 after being attacked at the family home he was building on a farm in Devon Valley, Stellenbosch. It is believed that the attack was drug related. Two young men have been arrested for the murder. Jochen is survived by his wife Christiane and son Kai. In May 2007 they suffered a tragedy when their daughter Stefanie (18 at the time) died as a result of a car accident.
All Jochen’s school friends send their love and deepest condolences to his family, friends and colleagues. As his funeral notice said, he was ‘one of a kind with an indomitable spirit.’
Jochen was born on 23 September 1953 and did his primary schooling at the German School in Pretoria. The photograph below, taken on the first day at school, shows him and three other classmates from Pretoria Boys High School days – Philip Immelman, Martin Dohm and Otto Kingsley.
Jochen attended Pretoria Boys High from 1967 to 1971. He was blessed with a keen intellect and was also an excellent swimmer. He was respected by his peers who elected him to become a school prefect. At our 40th reunion in 2011 I reminded him of his epic underwater swim in a PT class in Form 3 (I think). Someone asked if he could swim a length of the school pool underwater. ‘Easy,’ he replied. So someone else challenged him to do two. He accepted the challenge and immediately swam two lengths underwater while the rest of us watched in awe. It made him something of a class hero. ‘I remember that well,’ he said at the reunion. ‘No idea how I did it!’
I remember Jochen as a quiet and cheerful yet strong personality. A quote of his in a letter to The Star in 2009 seems to sum up how we knew him: ‘Men can be quite successful in life as gentle and compassionate souls.’ In recent years I was privileged to serve with him as a Trustee of Isibindi, a German based trust which does community development work in Limpopo and Namibia in partnership with church organisations. After school, Jochen completed an Engineering degree at Stellenbosch and worked as a Communications Engineer at Siemens Telecommunications. He then moved into the financial world, becoming a registered Investment Advisor and establishing Jochen Radel and Associates, which later became hi-phive Investments cc. The business is represented by a great sunflower – his favourite flower.
This man of integrity will be greatly missed by his family and friends and deeply mourned by his classmates from school at PBHS.
Letter from: Martin Breytenbach (5A, 1971)