Ann Eveleth
FIVE years, five months and two inquests after assassins snuffed out the lives of Vusi Ngcobo and Bonokhwakhe Gasa, at least 17 other victims of the same attack have descended into abject poverty, with a combined income of less than R200 per month.
Ngcobo’s frail elderly mother Khonzaphi suffered two bullet wounds in her legs during the attack which took her son’s life. But the loss of her son has left a more permanent disability. Vusi had supported the entire family on his earnings from his job at Framtex in New Germany.
Now Khonzaphi’s R150 monthly pension is all that stands between her two children and seven grandchildren — and the seven remaining Gasas — and starvation.
“I only get my pension money. I buy bulk samp and mealie meal and beans, but if the money is finished before the end of the month, it’s finished,” says Khonzaphi, adding that there are times when the food runs out too. “We’ve got nothing now. Sometimes we have no food and sometimes I don’t even know when we’ll eat next,” she adds.
The mealie field halfway up the steeply sloping Ngcono homestead where Vusi and Gasa were gunned down is still visible, but overgrown with weeds. Khonzaphi says she no longer has any money to buy seeds to plant crops.
The only time the family eats meat now is after the monthly pension cheque. Although Vusi’s wife bought two goats with money she recieved from Framtex after Vusi’s death, Khonzaphi says, “I can’t slaughter the goats because I have to sell them.”
She says she doesn’t know how much money her son used to earn, but that “He supported us well. We had enough food, clothing and meat every day.”
Although Khonzaphi says she was “born an Inkatha Freedom Party member”, the loss of her son has left no love lost between her and the murderers. Responding to the inquest findings, Khonzaphi said: “I hope those police will be arrested and hanged.”
As Khonzaphi pointed out: “I’m happy justice has been done to a cetain extent, but it will never bring my son back. The poverty we have lived in since then means I can never have justice.” Vusi’s wife, Ntombenhle, was only 30 years old when she succumbed to an illness and died, shortly after the murders. Friends believe she was heartbroken.
* The Democratic Party this week introduced a private member’s Bill in Parliament to allow for state compensation for victims of violence.
Vusi’s son Mzwake (17) dropped out of school to look for work, but was forced to return unemployed and empty-handed.
His sister Mpume (19) attends school, and fetches water from the river on her way home. The family could not afford electricity even if it was available in their area.
Khonzaphi’s 30-year-old daughter Ntombile is a mother of five who “sometimes gets R50 a month” from the children’s father living in Pinetown, but the worn clothing and bare feet of six-month-old Xolo, two-year-old Siyanda and Japena (6) attests to the limited nature of the stipend.
Ntombile says she cannot afford to pay school fees for the six schoolchildren and “the teachers now tell us they can’t support orphans”. Ntombile says she is also happy about the Inquest findings but adds: “They must hang straight away so they don’t come back and cause problems for us. The people resonsible must be punished and we must be compensated”.
Although the Gasa family were not home when the Weekly Mail & Guardian visited Swayimane this week, Khonzaphi says the two families have remained very close, adding that Bonokhwakhe Gasa’s mother has had an even rougher time.
She supports six children with no regular income: “She doesn’t even get a pension and Bonokhwakhe’s employer — a butcher in Pinetown — never gave any money,” says