Category: Families

  • I’m beginning to be free

    I’m beginning to be free

    NKOSIYABO XALABILE MTHATHA, EASTERN CAPE Lilita Xalabile spent just 19 precious days together with Nkosiyabo Xalabile as his wife. They were married on July 7 2012. He returned to Lonmin’s Marikana mine after their honeymoon, and died in the massacre on August 16. At our first meeting with Lilita, in March 2013, she was mourning…

  • My baby needs to grow up

    My baby needs to grow up

    ANELE MDIZENI NEAR ELLIOTDALE, EASTERN CAPE On a Friday afternoon in February about 20 young boys are practising stick fighting with thin branches tipped with leaves outside Notshovile Mdizeni’s house near Elliotdale in the Eastern Cape. They range from about four to 14 and the thwacks they administer vary from negligible taps to those boisterous…

  • I just buy the basics

    I just buy the basics

    BONGINKOSI YONA KWAMAQASHU, EASTERN CAPE Bonginkosi Yona was nuts for Kaizer Chiefs. He would sit entranced, giving a running commentary while watching their games at home on television. This passion eventually converted his wife, Nandipha, to the yellow and black. Remembering the Amakhosi match they attended together at the Royal Bafokeng stadium in Rustenburg while…

  • I see my son in this house

    I see my son in this house

    MVUYISI PATO NEAR BIZANA, EASTERN CAPE The bodies of the dead miners at Marikana did not lie on the ground long enough to attract carrion-feeders, but vultures have been circling their families ever since August 16 2012. “People started calling us soon afterwards saying they wanted to be our lawyers and that carried on into…

  • There is only salt and soup

    There is only salt and soup

    “I’ve been having visions of my brother. I have this dream of seeing my brother and child staring at me as if we are talking. They are always on my mind,” says Molokwana Nokamba. Molokwana’s brother, Ntandazo, was killed at Marikana on August 16. His own 11-year-old child died “immediately after we buried my brother”…

  • Maybe it’s an evil spirit

    Maybe it’s an evil spirit

    MGCINENI NOKITHWALIKHULU, EASTERN CAPE ‘The man in the green blanket’ is unfamiliar to the family of Mgcineni “Mambush” Noki, who was killed at Marikana during the strike for which he had become a media poster boy. Mambush’s younger brother, Sinovuyo, says: “From what we saw [on the television and in the newspaper photographs] he seemed…

  • Why is it always cabbage?

    Why is it always cabbage?

    THOBISILE ZIMBAMBELENEAR LUSIKISIKI, EASTERN CAPE THOBISILE ZIMBAMBELE NEAR LUSIKISIKI, EASTERN CAPE The photograph of her husband that Nokuthula Zimbambele keeps on her phone is no ordinary snapshot – it is a grim memento of violence and loss. “Here is my husband,” she says, offering the picture after gathering herself from tears. Scant warning, even in…

  • If I have a problem, I am alone with it

    If I have a problem, I am alone with it

    Nonkululeko Ngxande grieves, with the wind as her only companion. A framed head-handshoulders photograph of her husband, Mpumzeni, is the sole decoration in the sparse front room of her almost empty three-room house in Ngqeleni in the Eastern Cape. As a grieving Xhosa makothi , the 39-year-old widow doesn’t leave her home and, wearing her black izile or mourning…

  • I hoped for a knock on the door

    I hoped for a knock on the door

    THABISO MOSEBETSANE LUQHOQWENI, EASTERN CAPE When Ntombizolile Mosebetsane asked Anele*, a friend of her husband Thabiso, to help her to look for him on the Saturday after the Marikana massacre, his first instinct was “to go to Phokeng mortuary”. “But I wanted to do the best for my sister,” he says. So he drove around…

  • I want nothing to do with Marikana

    I want nothing to do with Marikana

    MPHANGELI THUKUZA NGQELENI, EASTERN CAPE Nokwandisa Thukuza broke down and sobbed as she recalled being summoned to the gathering of elders that her father-in-law, Tshoshotsho Thukuza, had convened to inform her and the rest of the family that his son, Mphangeli, had been one of the 34 miners killed by police on August 16 2012.…