Swapna Prabhakaran
Like most of Richmond’s remaining residents, Mabel Nxumalo is a portrait of strength. She has a solid, hard- worn look about her and though there is a deep grief in her eyes, there are no tears.
A week ago her sister, two of her sons and her daughter-in-law were shot dead. They were gunned down in their own house by unknown assailants for unknown reasons, while her 17-year-old granddaughter hid in a wardrobe, silent for safety.
This is Richmond, KwaZulu-Natal, and the five who died last Friday were just more gruesome casualties in the ongoing turmoil of the area – a turmoil which the weary residents of Richmond openly call war.
Richmond’s settlements are its heart, home to those who labour on the outlying farms and their families. The largest of these is Ndaleni, a neat network of small houses framed by dirt roads. There are schools, churches and shops. There are also hundreds of abandoned houses, hollow wrecks where once people lived.
Cross an invisible border and there is the neighbouring settlement, Magoda. Magoda is virtually indistinguishable from Ndaleni; it has much the same corner shops and more empty, windowless houses. But politically, Magoda and Ndaleni are worlds apart.
Ndaleni’s occupants are mostly African National Congress supporters, while the men and women of Magoda follow Sifiso Nkabinde under the banner of the United Democratic Movement.
Nkabinde maintains neither he nor the UDM is advocating violence in the area: “All these people [who live here], they are people with whom I have grown up. These are my friends, my family, you could even call some of them my parents,” he said this week. “It would take a stupid man to advocate violence in an area where his own family lives.”
But the killings have escalated since his return to Richmond after his acquittal on murder charges. In the past two weeks alone, more than two dozen people have been killed, and most of them are residents of Ndaleni.
While many of the killings of the past have been overtly politically motivated, some of the more recent victims have been innocents.
Nxumalo insists her kin were not obvious political targets. She says they had never been actively involved in the fierce tug of politics. “They were not high-profile activists, they were just ordinary members [of the ANC].”
Their deaths are confusing, like many of the other recent deaths. “People are dying in Richmond. It does not matter whether they are UDM or ANC, they are people,” says Nkabinde. “There is a sinister force acting in this area. Richmond seems to be the entry point for violence in this province.”
On Sunday Nxumalo will bury her loved ones. Until then, their bodies lie in cold metal drawers in the morgue, along with those of at least six others killed over the past five days.
Three teenage youths were shot in the head execution-style last weekend, a mother and her baby were shot with automatic rifles early on Sunday morning, and a young boy was killed in a skirmish on Wednesday night.
The horror of so many pointless deaths has left its mark on the residents. Those who can afford to leave house and job to flee have already done so. Most of those left behind are those who have no other choice but Richmond.
Life has become confusing and perilous for them. Heavily armed policemen and members of the South African National Defence Force patrol the streets. The taxis that take the men to work in the mornings are escorted by an armed guard, a precaution against a repeat of the attacks on taxis that took place a few weeks ago.
Nkosinathi Nyembe, a taxi marshal, says some of the people have already stopped going to work because of the recent ambushes on the main road between Magoda and Ndaleni. “Those who still use taxis do so at their own risk, and most of them are not sure whether they will come back from work or not.”
Journalists invade every sanctuary and meeting place, asking unanswerable questions at every funeral and leaving no space for private grief.
Gunfire can be heard at all hours, though the noise becomes infinitely more sinister at night – there are no street lights, and much of the killing has taken place in darkness. Most houses in the settlements do not have water, so young children are sent out to communal taps with large plastic buckets once a day.
“But we want them to be home as soon as they can, and we don’t want the children out at night,” says Agnes Madondo, a mother of five. “By 7pm everyone is in bed. If you go out after that, you are at risk.”
Madondo lives in the same compound as the three youths who were shot dead last weekend.
That night, when she heard the killing, she sheltered eight nieces and nephews, two sisters-in-law and all her own children in her room.
“I heard the gunfire, I could tell it was coming from within the compound, but we did not come out to look until 6.30 the next morning.”
When she did venture out of her room, she found the three boys had been made to kneel against a wall and had been shot at point-blank range. Madondo spent this week cleaning up the boys’ room after the bodies had been removed.