Happy's mixed genealogy was apparent as a child
Khuwana Simon Mthimunye, the man accused of murdering Happy Sindane, will appear in the KwaMhlanga magistrate's court for a bail hearing on April 11, after saying only "I did not kill" at his first court appearance. And with the funeral on April 6, Sindane's family members are entertaining guests and journalists while they try to clean the house in preparation.
Sindane's body was found lying in the gutter a short walk from his room. It appears that he was beaten to death with a rock.
It comes a decade after he walked into the local police station and said he was born to a white family and had been kidnapped by a black family. With the media saying it spoke to many of the divisions in South Africa, his case became world-famous.
The subsequent court case and DNA test showed that his father was a German, his mother a domestic worker who worked for the man. She left her child to the Sindane family.
The small blue room where Happy lived is on one side of the Sindane yard in Tweefontein, Mpumalanga. Other buildings are clustered around a central lawn. The verandas provide shade for the groups of people who come in during the day to share their condolences, as well as journalists conducting interviews.
His single bed has been turned on its side to make space for a large rock and bags of leaves taken from the gutter where he was murdered. Some of the leaves, packed inside a maize-meal bag, are smeared with dried blood. The rock also has a spattering of blood.
Happy died very unhappy
A few visitors come into the room, and recoil in shock when they see the rock. It was apparently not the one used to kill Sindane, but some try to use it to mimic the action it would have taken to kill him.
"Happy died very unhappy," says Maria Skosana, the woman who looked after him when his adopted mother, Betty Sindane, died a decade ago.
As people filter out of the room through the thin curtain that acts as its door, she stays to talk about him. As a child, he was very well behaved, but had trouble because he was different from the other children. "They would run away from him until they got used to him. Then he made friends easily," she says.
A single fluorescent bulb hangs from the zinc ceiling, with a bit of gold Christmas decoration wrapped around it. "The last time he was like that was when he was hit by a car. Then I had to wash his head," she says. This was in 2004 when a car ran over him as he was lying in the road.
She would bring him coffee every morning while he was recovering, she says, indicating the spot on his solitary set of drawers where she would put it. A giant teddy bear, worn by age and use, sits on top of the drawers, next to a half-full red laundry basket of his dirty clothes.
She would then make him his favourite meal – oats. "I always made the milk warm for him."
Who would kill Happy?
In a lull in the conversation, she suddenly looks up with sad eyes. "He's dead, he's dead." For the first time, the smile she has been wearing drops. "I still don't think he is dead and I can't sleep properly at night. Who would kill Happy?"
But then she reverts to smiling and talking. The whole family is in a similar state, driven by the constant activity of doing interviews and welcoming neighbours.
Sindane's brother, Mduduzi, spends most of the time quietly looking at visitors and the people playing with the bloodied rock. The only time he smiles is when he remembers the joy his brother had at being alive. "He was just so happy all of the time," he says.
Inside the main house, a framed picture of Sindane and his cousins hangs on a wall. The young boy stands out from the group, with his paler skin. One of the cousins, Thomas Sindane, says the only time he can remember him being sad was when he went to court to find his biological family.
He had since stopped talking about his family and had not tried to find them.
Unemployed, he spent much of his time like the other people in the community sitting outside their houses talking and going to local bars. There was little else to do.
Rowdy crowd
"He spent his time chilling," says Thomas. He did have a love for electronics and tinkered with all the appliances around the house, he says. "He had no close friends, but he was always happy and had many friends. That Sunday morning, he just went to the tavern to relax."
The tavern is a few hundred metres away from the Sindane home, but requires a loop around the block to get to. There is a cool afternoon breeze and the bar is already thronged by a rowdy crowd. The bartender, who does not want to be named, says Happy was a regular and would spend whole days drinking there.
"When he had money, he would get Black Label, but normally he didn't and would get the chibuku [traditional beer]."
And although he would often get into arguments with people when he was drunk, nobody took him seriously because he was so small. "You could push him and he would fall over," the bartender says.
A Kaizer Chiefs fan, he was liked by everyone, "even Pirates fans".
"He was always here last and he was a good man," he says.
Nearby bar
The gutter where Sindane's body was found early on Monday morning would have been a detour from the normal route from the tavern to his room. But with so many taverns dotting the area, people say he could have gone to another one.
Now empty packets lie in the culvert where the family say the alleged murderer tried to shove his body. Other rocks, like the one in his room, line the road. People walk past, unperturbed by the comings and goings of journalists. Children in the nearest house do cartwheels in the dirt and the nearby bar is full again.
On the far side of KwaMhlanga, the name Happy Sindane brings immediate recognition. In one house, a friend quickly runs out, keen to talk about him.
"I met him two years ago when he came [to] this side. Everyone knew him and everyone liked him," says Emmanuel Mahlangu.
The two spent many hours drinking together, and although Happy might have had a problem with alcohol, people were never violent towards him when he was drunk because he was harmless, Mahlangu says.
"Nobody would fight with Happy. People loved him."