patient advocate, Zane is Chairman and Founder of SADAG (The South African Depression and Anxiety Group); a patient group which has grown to over 40,000 patients, 200+ support groups, and a Scientific and Advisory Board of 12 professionals who donate their time to ensure that the largest mental health group in Africa continues to succeed.

Zane formed SADAG in 1994, to promote the welfare of people with mental health problems, throughout South Africa and its neighbouring states helping Zimbabwe, Namibia and Swaziland to establish their own advocacy groups. As Chairman of SADAG Zane represents the many hundreds of thousands of people who suffer from depression, phobias, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, social anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder and generalised anxiety disorder.

In 2005 Zane created and launched the“Speaking Book”, a world first and achieving a major breakthrough in presenting complex health issues. For the first time, people with low levels of literacy are able to access vital health care information through this interactive, multi-lingual and highly effective learning tool.

Speaking Books have now been recognised and endorsed by organisations such as World Bank, USAID, Merck, Pfizer, Unicef and WMA in the USA, and the Departments of Heath and Education in South Africa, Swaziland, and Ethiopia as a cost effective and reliable way to provide vital health care information to low literacy communities. To date over 60 titles and variations of the Speaking Books have been distributed in the field and in 29 different languages including Zulu, Swahili, Xhosa, French, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Hausa, and Mandarin.

Zane has