Glebelands – a daily war zone
Nobody flinches at the sound of gunshots and screams, seeing anything is a ‘death warrant’
WOMEN and children live in umlazi’s Glebelands hostel, built for African men by the old regime. Yet despite this semblance of normal life, in Glebelands death is never far off and no one flinches or looks up at the gunshots and screaming. To see anything is as good as a death warrant.
This week the Sunday Tribune visited the hostel again, this time to mark Women’s Month by speaking to the mothers raising families under conditions akin to war.
More than 90 murders have been recorded at the hostel since 2014 – far less than the real figure, say the women who were interviewed.
They repeated allegations, made to the Moerane Commission currently investigating the violence, of police officers colluding with killers.
Nolwazi Mantomane (not her real name), a grandmother from the Eastern Cape, arrived at Glebelands in 1987 to look for a job in Durban.
She lived with a romantic partner until they broke up in 1994, then she found her own room.
“When I first came here, a woman was not allowed to have her own room. You were only allowed to come in for a weekend visit and you were arrested if the police found you here during the week, so I had to hide from police until around 1992,” she said.
Mantomane has seen everything at Glebelands and she knows that only by keeping your eyes down and looking away do you live another day.
After her mother died in 2005, she was forced to fetch her three children from the Eastern Cape to live with her.
“I feel so helpless because there is nothing I can do to protect them. I lie awake most nights thinking of what to do but I come up with nothing.”
She says even leaving Glebelands is no escape as hired killers follow residents to their rural homes.
“I know a family in Mthatha, who were threatened by hitmen who went there looking for a man who lived in the old blocks. The man vanished in 2015 but we think he is in hiding.”
Bongekile Mbhele, like Mantomane, came from the Eastern Cape in 1990 after her cousin secured her domestic work in Glenwood. Glebelands used to be a “quiet and peaceful place” until the political violence between the IFP and ANC in the 1990s. Things went back to normal around 1997, she said.
“We were scared even then as people were killed for suspected links to a political party but I don’t think we had as many deaths as in the past three years,” she added.
Mantomane lost her job as a result of the ongoing violence. She was a night shelf-packer in a supermarket in the city centre but could not risk leaving her children alone at night.
“After the killing of councillor Zodwa Sibiya (killed in front of her children in Glebelands, in April 2016), I realised that no one was safe in this place. I asked my manager if I could come in early in the morning to work but he said no. I couldn’t carry on with a job where I knocked off at midnight, I was worried about my kids and what I would encounter when I arrived home at dawn,” she said.
Thandeka Mbhele from Kwakhoza, near Gingindlovu, said not all of the killings were related to the “selling of beds” as reported in the media. She explained that some victims came from rural areas, where there were disputes between families or people under different headmen.
“The killings over the beds made the area fertile ground for revenge killings and, as a result, no one is safe because they will even kill a woman to avenge someone’s death,” she said.
The average household income for women-headed families in Glebelands is about R2 000, as most families rely on social grants and temporary jobs to make ends meet.
“My last temporary job was in 2015 and luckily my two older children found construction jobs two months ago. They are not earning much but it’s something,” said mother of five Busi Zindela.
Zindela lives with all her children and three grandchildren in a room originally allocated to one person. Four of them sleep on the bed and the rest squeeze into a small floor space.
They share the apartment’s kitchen and bathroom with three other families, who also have to squeeze into their small bedrooms.
“We would leave if we could afford rent but at least here we are only paying R115 a month,” she said.
They can only afford to save R150 monthly and pay R400 for funeral insurance – insurance they know they’ll need if they stay in the hostel. Pseudonyms have been used to keep interviewees safe.