Masseuse Sonja Steyn received an unusual request last week — please rush to the collapsed building site in George where rescue workers' muscles were seizing up after working non-stop in a race to find survivors.
“We were overwhelmed” by the need for deep tissue massages, she said this week as the last tons of rubble were cleared from 75 Victoria Street, where 33 people died in the Garden Route town.
“When there was a call out for bodies or patients to be retrieved everybody was on site, working. But there would be times when there were no bodies or patients and I was quite busy.
“I had a specific gentleman, a giant of a man, that cried and said, 'you just rubbed all the emotions out of me'. It was humbling to bring some comfort to such brave men,” she said.
Even when police cleared the site of all but essential crew, the rescuers insisted their masseuse remain.
The dramatic transformation of Steyn’s daily routine, from treating Lycra-clad trail runners and office workers with shoulder spasms to kneading burly men coated in concrete dust, is indicative of the broader transformation of the southern Cape town.
Search and rescue efforts were concluded on Friday; the site was classified as a crime scene and handed over to police. The initial estimate of 81 people being on site was revised to 62. In total 34 people were rescued, five of whom later succumbed to injuries.
Among the bodies recovered this week was that of 28-year-old electrical student Sihle Mohle.
Once considered the home of upmarket golf estates and conservative politics — its airport was named after former president PW Botha — since Monday last week George has been synonymous with the disaster. Images of “ground zero”, where a partially-built five-storey residential block collapsed concertina-style in seconds, replaced the town’s emblematic landscape vistas. Rising clouds of dust; sirens wailing in discordant panic; cranes jostling for traction on mismatched concrete pilings while pedestrians craned their necks to see past a makeshift security cordon: these are the new images seared into the town’s collective memory.
But as the pain and dust recede, the story emerging is not of a crumpled town but of a resilient one. As the disaster unfolded the men and women rushing to help were ordinary townsfolk from all walks of life — from the local masseuse to car guards.
Nearby office workers raced to help victims trapped under rubble. Volunteers arrived, offering social services and supplies — an avalanche of food donations as charity groups and churches opened their hearts and wallets to families waiting at the municipal building for news of missing loved ones.
There were banks of flowers piled up against the security railing, on the pavement, and even tucked into election posters on street lamps. “Our thoughts are with you” read a card on a bouquet next to the site entrance. “Keep the faith”, read another. Curated white blossoms formed the words “George Cares” in a giant floral display outside the municipality entrance.
“It was amazing to see how, irrespective of who you are, what race you are, it was like a family that came together,” said flower seller Suraya Cassiem, seated outside her flower kiosk on York Street. “Ladies came here and bought flowers from me, two white ladies. We hugged each other, we started to cry when one told me, 'You know, Suraya, this is so sad, I feel for people inside there'.”
A doctor in private practice helped out at the disaster site admin office. “It’s what we do, we help out,” she said, adding that her normal work could wait.
Funeral service AVBOB offered to fund the burial of South African victims.
The rescue effort also benefited from the worldly experience of Gift of the Givers, who provided their own dog unit. “The face of that person coming out alive from that rubble, the joy, it is something I will carry for the rest of my life,” said team leader Mario Ferreira.
The response quickly ramped up to meet the scale of the country's worst building construction disaster. Later, the strain and horror in downtown George gave way to relief as a semblance of order returned to everyday life.
Familiar smells, the whiff of dust and diesel fumes, replaced the odour of death that hung over the site in the heat of last week. President Cyril Ramaphosa arrived on Thursday, to meet grieving relatives and rescue workers. Dancing residents chanted slogans as they jostled for a glimpse of Ramaphosa.
“We want to be here as government at all levels to demonstrate our compassion,” he told affected families in the town hall. “We are a government that has compassion, that is on the side of the suffering at all times.
“We are here as government not just to grab any headlines, but here to give assistance.”
It was the ordinary rescuers who made headlines. They were rewarded last weekend when 33-year-old tiler Gabriel Guambe was pulled from a small gap between huge slabs of concrete.
Many remarked afterwards that one unlikely rescue “made all the effort worthwhile”, as if Guambe’s escape was the reprieve everybody needed, temporary though it was, from the crushing weight of the tragedy.
In the end the rescue and recovery operation lasted 260 hours.
For Cassiem, who has sold fresh flowers for the past 30 years, the past week saw a disaster blossom into a sign of redemption. “I’ve seen how our white people cried, everybody coming together, some upper-class people, some middle-class, people from the location, all mixed together — it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in all my years in George.”
But beneath the narrative of unity and miracle rescues is the haunting silence of the victims, and many unanswered questions about what went wrong and who is responsible.
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