'We will take the scars of that brutal day to our individual graves'

‘Phuthuma, ndoda phuthuma, phuthuma la ekhaya …” (Brother, please rush … rush home.)

My elder brother Malusi Hadebe was on the line and I could hear the agony in his voice as he spoke in a hushed, broken tone. It was 6am on a slightly chilly but sunny day in Durban — Monday June 19 2000.

“They’ve killed our brothers. I’m in an ambulance with Nomusa … ”

I stumbled out of bed in the flat I was sharing with a colleague in Victoria Embankment, near the harbour in the city centre. I later discovered that Malusi had also been wounded in the attack that claimed the lives of my brothers Nhlanhla and Themba. Nomusa, who was to have been my sister-in-law, died in hospital a few hours later.

I tried to ask more questions but Malusi dropped the call, sparing me the gory details of the tragedy that had just befallen our humble family in what was, and still is, the hugely underdeveloped Dube Village settlement in the Inanda area, about 25km north of Durban.

This is where my late father, Daniel Boy Hadebe, and my beloved mama, Lilian NoMgqibelo, had raised us, their eight kids — five boys and three girls. My father had been a scooter-driving messenger. He died at work in 1992 when his scooter collided with a car. My father had acquired a decent stand in the late ’70s on what was originally John Langalibalele Dube’s farm.

Yes, the farm had belonged to the one and only JL Dube, who was elected as the first president of the South African Native National Congress in Mangaung, Free State, in 1912.

WORLD SHATTERED

When I received that fateful call from my crying brother I was 26 years old and three years into my journalism career — a career that was championed and bankrolled by the generosity of Nhlanhla, who was 32 years old.I had no doubt in my mind that my own world and life had just been shattered.

Our worst fears as a family had happened in a flash.I was trembling like a single leaf on the weakest of stems, a flood of tears streaming down my face as I told my flatmate, Thulani Mbatha, what had just happened. He was a colleague and fellow sports writer, for the Post newspaper. I was writing for Soccer News magazine, which would be shut down, leaving me unemployed, a month after the tragedy at home.I must have washed my face and brushed my teeth before taking a taxi home. The journey usually took about half an hour; on that day it felt like five minutes.

When I arrived home I looked for my mother so I could cry on her shoulder, but I couldn’t find her.

Instead I was greeted by the lifeless body of my eldest brother, Themba, sprawled outside our rondavel — a sacred place where we still gather when there’s a need to call on our ancestors to protect us from all sorts of evil in our lives.

On that Monday our ancestors didn’t come to the rescue, or should I say they were overpowered by the devil — or perhaps, like us, caught off guard. The murderers had fired multiple shots, instantly killing both my brothers and fatally wounding Nomusa.

When I looked at the handsome face of my 35-year-old brother Themba, it was like he was saying to me, “Don’t worry, my brother, there’s nothing you could have done to protect us today. We were cornered this time and had nowhere to run.”

I sobbed uncontrollably.I walked — staggered — past a few houses, looking for my mother.

I found her in a passageway between two neighbouring mud houses, forlornly sitting on the grass next to the lifeless body of my dear brother Nhlanhla, covered in a blanket. There were a few bystanders, some of them trying their best to console her. The sight of her and the sound of her wails still pierce my heart to this day.

When I arrived home I looked for my mother so I could cry on her shoulder, but I couldn’t find her.

Nhlanhla would come home at the end of every school year with a no 1 symbol in his school report. He was the pride, hope and joy of my humble family — the one we knew one day would surely provide some form of an escape from the poverty that we had endured and that surrounded us in our village, especially after he attained his Bachelor of Social Science degree from the University of Natal in 1991. In a matter of seconds, those hopes went up in flames.

I pulled back the blanket covering my brother’s body. I saw the gaping hole on the left side of his head, possibly inflicted by an AK-47. The police later confirmed that the criminals had used 9mm pistols and AK-47s, but the exact nature of how he died is still a mystery to me.

I had never seen such brutality and cruelty. It was as if the thugs had taken out a hated rival — one who had been troubling and eluding them for many, many years.

My mother must have cursed March 11 1937, the day she was born to her parents. No parent should have to bury her children. Yet in the 20 years since she has always managed to smile. In my book my mama is peerless, simply among the best of our beloved mothers, with her enormous resilience. Most of our mothers are like that: think of what apartheid did to many of our freedom fighters. Our mothers bore the brunt of it and they still had to smile and keep the fires burning in our homes.

The roots of this family tragedy lay in six months of turmoil in our area as two rival gangs robbed, killed and shot everybody in their way as they tried to take control of our village. Some of the members of these nameless and very informal gangs were as young as 15. My 18-year-old nephew, Zuko Philangezwi Nomkruca, was a member of one of these gangs. He was shot and killed three months after the murder of my brothers.

On the morning of the killing, my nephew’s gang had murdered a 23-year-old rival gangster and the gunmen struck in revenge.

NOT A SINGLE QUESTION 

A few weeks before the tragedy, my brothers had visited me in the flat. They told me how ineffective the police were in dealing with the two gangs and the criminal violence they were inflicting upon our village.

My brothers spoke as if they had a premonition they were going to be the next victims of this vicious cycle of slaughter, and they knew that the police would do nothing more than collect their bodies for the mortuary — as they had done to other victims of the same violence in the area.

In the 20 years since the police have never knocked on our door to ask a single question or told us of their progress with the case.

The last time I saw the police at our home was when they picked up the bodies of my brothers. Nobody from the South African Police Service came the following day, or in the weeks, months or years after, to comfort us or ask questions with the intention of arresting the criminals. They just never cared.

We will take the scars — some visible, as in the case of my brother Malusi — of that brutal day to our individual graves.

We abandoned our homestead and sought a home elsewhere as soon as we had buried our brothers.

Towards the end of 2001 my mother insisted we return to our home, not because the situation was any better, but because she knew no other life nor a place she could really call home, having spent 24 years of her life there.

WARLORDS

How many other families suffer in silence because of police who simply don’t follow up on cases? When the victims of crime have no standing in the community, the police are capable of disappearing.That same disappearing act perpetuates violence and breeds fear of warlords in areas such as the hostels of KwaMashu and Glebelands in Durban.

We heard of attacks in the KwaMakhutha area, south of Durban, where criminals massacred seven people. The police so far are reported to have arrested one suspect. A few days after the KwaMakhutha killing, on June 7, six men were butchered near Jabulani Hostel.

As a family we have forgiven the criminals who burst into our home, guns blazing, and changed our lives and memories forever. Most of those we suspected of the killings have met a bloody end anyway.

My dear mother, over 80 years now, is still smiling. When I told her I wanted to write our story, tears ran down her face.

She said: “Tell them with the little that we have, we’re surviving. We’ve survived by the grace of God. In this village we all know there are thousands that are a lot worse off and have no-one to look up to for the next meal or shelter.

“What will make me happy going to my grave is if I leave you guys in a safer situation, protected by the law … by the same police that we wished could come and do something about what happened here 20 years ago.”