Ann Eveleth
Kipha Nyawosa doesn’t believe in revenge, a remarkable principle for someone as accustomed to burying family members as he has become in the past year.
Between October 1994 and June 1995, Nyawosa has buried 14 family members following a spate of brutal attacks endemic to the townships and rural areas around Port
“If I say I want revenge, that would be stupid because it won’t stop the violence. If someone burns down my house and I burn down theirs, they will only come back,” says the 37-year-old African National Congress
He doesn’t believe in fleeing either. When seven relatives — including two babies — were gunned down in January in the third attack on the family kraal in rural Shobashobane ward, most of his neighbours packed their bags and fled to Durban, where they sleep on the
Nyawosa sent his wounded mother and five-year-old son Sibahle, who survived the attack, to live with friends, quit his job in nearby Margate and returned home to help defend the community.
“When my family was killed, I saw it was getting very bad here and all the people were leaving. I had to come back to get some security for my family and the community. This is my home and I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Now, even the brother who helped him buy the coffins is gone, shot dead in June at the local taxi rank, “just because he was my brother”.
The warm winds of spring blow almost unnoticed over the desolate hills of Shobashobane. Empty rondavels and burnt-out shops stand bitter testimony to the community’s flight. The winding dirt road through this rural ghost town is empty except for a half dozen boys on bicycles and a couple of abandoned pets.
Last year’s historic elections brought little relief to the local communities which seem permanently embedded on KwaZulu-Natal’s flashpoint map. “Before the elections, my family was alive. Now they are dead … I don’t feel this new South Africa we got last April. At the moment it’s not so good, because people are dying like flies.”
Nyawosa can hardly remember how the fighting first started, in the late 1980s, except that it followed the arrival of “people from far away, like Empangeni and Impendle”, but now, he says: “Shobashobane is like an island of ANC surrounded by a sea of IFP areas.”
“When I was a boy here, this place was very nice. We all lived nicely together and played soccer and sang in the choir together. We could go into Nkulu ward any time and the people would help us. There was no violence and we saw someone from another area as our brother — not our enemy,” Nyawosa remembers.
Now he doesn’t go to neighbouring Nkulu ward without an escort. Visible on the next hill crest across the valley, it is an Inkatha Freedom Party stronghold and home to local IFP leader Sipho Ngcobo who, together with IFP Port Shepstone leader James Zulu and several white right-wingers, faces charges relating to a spate of pre-election attacks linked to the shadowy Natal Liberation Army.
Reliable sources say Ngcobo called residents together last week to demand R15 contributions for Shaka Day ceremonies. A month ago, the sources say, he called for R20 contributions “to buy guns, bombs and intelezi (muti)”.
Also home to the Izingolweni district police station, regional court and the only clinic and shops left in the area, Shobashobane residents have to pass Nkulu’s central business district to get to their homes. Shootings in broad daylight at the T-junction are common, and evoke little response from the police station 500 metres away. Taxi drivers no longer venture down the dirt road because transporting ANC members invites attack and shopkeepers dare not sell to residents. One was killed last week after supplying goods to the ANC ward.
A former taxi driver and self-trained electrician, Nyawosa says he understands why the Reconstruction and Development Programme has failed to make its mark on the area: “If I was a businessman, I don’t think I would put an RDP project in a place like this, because they will just burn it.”
Schools and churches stand empty after priests and teachers were driven out by the violence. There is hardly anybody left to teach anyway. The boys on bikes spend their days riding up and down the sloping road, scouting the horizon for attackers coming across the valley or strangers on the road who fail to give the correct code.
“If they see someone coming, they ride to the other police station to tell the Internal Stability Unit,” says Nyawosa.
But Nyawosa says the people have little faith in the ISU, which is blamed for stoking the violence. Local violence monitors cite a litany of unsolved cases and the ease with which murder suspects obtain bail — often with police arguing on their behalf — as evidence of continued collusion between some members of the police and warlords.
One of Port Shepstone’s most feared “warlords”, IFP kwaXolo leader Sqoloza Xolo, is currently out on bail on more than 14 counts of murder.
At the moment, Nyawosa doesn’t sleep in the same house two nights in a row for fear of attack but, he says: “If we get the SANDF I can sleep nicely here, and I think the people would come back so this place would get better.”
Surprisingly, Nyawosa says he does not sleep with a gun under his pillow: “I don’t even have a butcher knife in my house. It was too hard for ANC people to get gun licences. Only the IFP got them. I don’t want to keep an unlicensed weapon because I’m dealing with the police so much it would be dangerous.”
But Nyawosa admits not all of his comrades share his patience: “I have to convince them not to take revenge. I tell them we must talk so we can all live together nicely. If the talks don’t work, then we can take revenge. For the moment, they are listening to me.”