Khwezi and mother had to live life on the run

FEZEKILE Kuzwayo was a people person, but most South Africans only got to know about the woman nicknamed Khwezi once she had to hide herself and her identity during and after the rape trial of Jacob Zuma in late 2005.

The trial, in which Zuma was acquitted of raping Fezekile, led to her and her mother being branded as devils. Fikile Mbalula, now a minister in Zuma’s cabinet but then leader of the ANC Youth League, called Fezekile a “Lucifer”, a description that those of us who knew her well reject with disgust.

On the contrary, she was a most lovable person who had a real life before the rape saga. She lived her life to the full. Despite living with HIV, she was happy and almost always full of life. She was also devoted to her mother, Beauty Kuzwayo, whom she equated to an elder sister and best friend.

She was often surrounded by friends, people of all races and backgrounds. It was normal for those around her to laugh and talk about anything of interest, be it the arts, politics, religion, you name it.

Growing up as an only child in foreign lands bequeathed her the ability to make and keep as many friends as she could. Many of them are now friends with one another.

Many friends were unshakeable pillars of support as they stood with her through the darkness.

Other friends faltered, but neither Fezekile nor her mother ever condemned them.

One such friend visited them in the Netherlands, only for Fezekile and

Growing up as an only child bequeathed her the ability to make and keep many friends

her mother to discover later that she was there to steal their identity documents.

Then there was the friend who could not account for all their household goods left in storage in Durban when they left for the Netherlands.

Another tried to bully Fezekile into confessing to having been bribed to make the rape allegation.

Fezekile was also known as Fezeka — which her mother prefers — or just Fezi as many friends called her. The paradoxes of her life are poignantly captured in the pseudonym she had to adopt. Ikhwezi is Zulu for the morning star, signalling the dawn when darkness is about to give way to sunshine. Yet in her case, Khwezi signalled the opposite: the beginning of darkness and hardship. It marked the start of her second journey to exile, this time to the Netherlands.

Her first exile had been 30 years earlier when Fezi was an infant.

In the mid-’70s her family hopped from one country to another across southern Africa, living in Swaziland, Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Zambia among others. Fezekile was devastated by the death of her father, Judson Diza Kuzwayo, in a car accident in 1985. He was the ANC representative in Zimbabwe at the time.

Until she died last Saturday, Fezekile and her mother still feared for their lives.

On New Year’s Eve in 2013, after attending a funeral in KwaMashu, my wife Nokuthula and I visited the Kuzwayos. Fezekile’s mother was living in a house in the precincts of a church. When we arrived, their belongings were packed in boxes,

Until she died last Saturday, Fezekile and her mother still feared for their lives

ready to move house. The church wanted the house back and Beauty Kuzwayo had nowhere to go. Fezekile was visiting from Tanzania where she had remained as a teacher after her mother insisted on returning home.

They were unsure whether someone had whispered their identities to the church’s ecclesiastics. A member of the congregation told them her sister had an empty backroom in another part of KwaMashu. The plan worked for a while. They had to leave even this room after they received a surprise visit from two journalists. The Kuzwayos’ lives were again thrown into turmoil.

Many of Fezi’s friends supported her as she tried to rebuild her life. She attempted to change her name because she hoped to live a new life as a teacher and not as Khwezi, the personification of fear and apprehension. But she would not live long enough to see any new dawn.

Thokozani Mtshali is a former Sunday Times journalist.