It was Sunday around noon in 2003 when two voice messages in quick succession made it clear I needed to get to my cousin Ndo’s house in Mapetla urgently.
Sindi, Ndo’s younger sister, was gravely ill. She had been diagnosed with HIV a few years earlier and things looked bleak. Yet on that day she refused to be taken to hospital.
Consensus was that I was the one best able to talk sense into her.
English grammar requires that I call Sindi my cousin by virtue of her being my father’s sister’s daughter. But in my grandmother’s house in Dobsonville there were no such distinctions.
After all, Sindi was the sister, not yet 10 herself, who risked the bullets and tear gas to come and fetch me from Boitumelo crèche back on that wild afternoon I was later to learn was June 16.
I arrived in Mapetla, tongue-tied and with tears welling in my eyes. What do you tell someone who tells you that they have made peace with the fact that they’re dying and all they want is for it to happen in the company of people they know and love?
In that moment the images of a shared life came streaming back. The sibling rivalries; the arguments about who washed and dried the supper dishes — a necessary debate because without a kitchen sink or taps, the washer bore the responsibility of carrying the dishwater to the drain at the dark corner of the yard. In my mind’s eye flashed the proud moments of her having beaten up bully boys who had had made my life miserable.
Now I was supposed to tell her that it was okay for her to go to an impersonal state institution to die.
Having convinced her that it would be sad to see her writhe in pain before our eyes without knowing what to do about it when experts could help make her transition to the next life less painful, she agreed to go to Coronation hospital.
I recall the doctor who examined her calling me aside and telling me that if there were any outstanding family issues we wanted to resolve with her, we had better do it because Sindi was running out of time. She had full-blown Aids and her CD count was negligible.
Sindi’s older sister started making funeral arrangements and announcing where the funeral service would take place.
Sindi recovered from this bout, but it was one of the many battles she would have to fight against the virus.
Having resigned from her job as a police officer after being found guilty of stealing money from the cop shop where she was stationed — money she would later tell a magistrate she had taken to buy anti-retrovirals — life was tough.
In March 2004 she made national news when she wrote an open letter to President Thabo Mbeki that was published in the Sunday Times. In it she pleaded: ”I need antiretroviral drugs but the clinic does not yet have them and I cannot afford to buy them. My immune system is weak and I am running out of time.”
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang responded by asking that she exercise patience.
In her response Sindi told the Sunday Times: ”I understand what she says and that I might have problems with drug resistance. But I do feel impatient. I need the drugs now.”
Her courage to speak out and directly address a president who’d rather believe that there was no crisis was rewarded when she landed a job with the Clinical HIV Research Unit at Wits University and began training as a counsellor.
As it turned out, contracting the virus revived her zest for life and unleashed the love and compassion that was hitherto confined to her nephews and nieces. She has no children of her own.
Last December Sindi suffered a stroke. She lost the use of her right side — her hands and legs. Her speech slurred and she confused the names of people, sometimes calling them by the names of their relatives, who had been dead for more than 10 years.
Those who had not seen her when she first fell ill were horrified about her prospects. It was a stroke, for sure, but if you had seen her remarkable recovery from the shadow of death, you would understand why none of those closest to her joined in the wailing about her situation.
We joked about how we had to thank the stroke for succeeding where many had failed because it made her keep quiet. Every Aids Day I wish her a ”happy Aids Day”, but I still complain to her about how unfair it is that they have a special day and the rest of us don’t.
I have relatives who were incarcerated on Robben Island and some who chose exile, but Sindi is my biggest struggle hero.