A generous General
Tough Auntie Gabisile has KwaMashu saluting and going “yes ma’am”, but she is just a marshmallow inside.
Uzalo Weekdays SABC1 (*191) 20:30
The Mthethwa family have heard the word “no” ever since they were forced to flee their home and hide in KwaMashu from a criminal syndicate trafficking people with albinism. Even the church doors slam shut in Bab’Mthethwa’s (Simphiwe Nxumalo) face when he goes looking for work on Friday 31 August. But there’s one person in the community whose hands and heart are always reaching out – although you wouldn’t expect it. “Ah, Gabisile (Baby Cele) is a tough cookie but she has a strong heart. She is running her own NGO where she helps the needy. It’s who she is, but people tend to overlook this because of her character,” admits Baby. “We have the youth group in the church and I’m not sure that even they like Gabisile. I think they are so scared of her. They tolerate her, but they call her The General! But she always wants to help.” And the Mthethwa family have a stroke of luck when young Khwezi Mthethwa (Owethu Zulu) catches Gabisile eye’s and heart during the episode on Friday 31 August.
IT TAKES A CHILD
“She bumps into Khwezi by mistake. She is looking for another girl who is a drug addict and she starts asking Khwezi questions like, ‘Who are you, I don’t know you around here, where are your parents?’, only to find that they don’t even have a place to stay. And when she sees the conditions that they are living in, it’s just so appalling. And she just falls in love with Khwezi immediately,” explains Baby. “So when she tries to offer them help and they refuse, Gabi is like, ‘I am not doing this for you but for this child. Let me help this child because she is innocent in all of this.’ Khwezi knows that people want to kill her and her father and sell her body parts, but at the same time she doesn’t fully understand why. All she wants is to go to school and have friends. Sometimes she will ask, ‘But why are they doing this to us?’ And it’s not an easy thing to answer. You need to be really sensitive about it.”
SISTER vs BROTHER
Once they see the kind of person that Gabisile is, the Mthethwas open up to her on Monday 3 September to share a little of their story. But Gabisile still finds that there is resistance when she approaches the church for help on their behalf. “When she goes to her brother, who is a pastor, well, they have different views as people. Pastor Mdletshe (Glen Gabela) says to her, ‘There are police out there, there is law. Why don’t you take these people there and help them?’ Gabisile tells him that ‘you will never understand what these people are going through.’ When it comes to people with albinism, I don’t think that even Pastor Mdletshe knows what is really happening – until they start to run away and they start to hide because people are going after them,” explains Baby.
TIGER MOTHER
But while Gabisile is reaching out to help the Mthethwas, she is also starting to realise that she isn’t always the best person to help. After Zekhethelo (Nyalleng Thibedi) overdoses while under Gabisile’s care in her informal rehab centre on Wednesday 29 August, Gabisile admits that she might have bitten off more than she can chew. “Whenever she tries to help, she messes things up. With the rehab, she said, ‘I am going to do this my way,’ only to find that it’s too much. It really gets out of hand and Zekhethelo nearly dies.” Addiction might be no laughing matter, but the kind of people who are hunting the Mthethwas are a far, far deadlier proposition.