Tag: Eastern Cape
-
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
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
“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
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?
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
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
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
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.…
-
They cut his life short
CEBISILE YAWA CALA, EASTERN CAPE Andile Yawa took his first train journey 36 years ago – to the mines. He was 20. “I didn’t have a blanket, only a blazer, and my mother had bought me a pair of secondhand shoes that were too tight,” he says. “That was the first time I wore shoes.”…
-
How do we survive
THABISO THELEJANE PABOLONG, EASTERN CAPE The peach trees in Makopano Thelejane’s yard are withering in the late autumn dryness. The peaches in the front are for the neighbours and the ones at the back are for the family, Makopano tells us in a lighter moment. That’s what her husband, Thabiso, used to say. “He was…