'Unofficial' World's Oldest Man Dies in South Africa

A 116-year-old survivor of the 1918 Spanish Flu thought he was one of the oldest people in the world who died in South Africa on Saturday, his family said.

Born on May 8, 1904, Fredie Blom had "lived a long period because of the grace of God," he told AFP this year.

Guinness World Records records the oldest individual still alive as the 112-year-old Briton Bob Weighton, but South African reports have identified Blom as "unofficially" the oldest in the country.

The whole family of Blom was washed out by the Spanish flu pandemic when he was only a child.

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But he himself survived and went on to raise the three children of his wife of 46 years, Jeanette, as his own, becoming grandfather to five over the years.

"Two weeks ago oupa (grandfather) was still chopping wood," family spokesman Andre Naidoo told AFP fondly, recalling the old man using a 4-pound hammer.

"He was a strong man, full of pride," he added.

But within three days, his family saw him fall "from a large man to a small man."

Born in the rural town of Adelaide, close the Great Winterberg Mountain Range of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, Blom died at the Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town.

His death was "not a COVID death at all, it's normal natural death," Naidoo said in reference to the coronavirus pandemic.