Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Changing young lives one prayer at a time
WHEN he bought a notorious shebeen, Shaik Ntsikelelo Nazeem Ntintili converted a sacrilegious house into a sacred home and, with that, saved several young men and women in Harare, Khayelitsha.
Ntintili, a former devout Christian who lived in Crossroads, began his journey into Islam in 1992 with his soccer mates from Mitchells Plain.
His friends would show up in their thobes.
“They looked so pure and clean, so I thought to myself I needed that. I eventually asked them to take me to a mosque,” he said.
Ntintili has not looked back since, and now he is on a mission to change the ways of Harare’s youth.
“I was also stuck in my ways. I partied a lot and there were criminal elements in the things my friends got up to, but eventually I met Islam and immediately saw change in me. I want the same for most young men and women in Khayelitsha,” he said.
His work with the Khayelitsha community attracted an invitation from the King of Saudi Arabia to the Hajj in 2015, where he mingled with former boxing world champion Mike Tyson and Proteas batsman Hashim Amla.
“That was a beautiful feeling and experience. It’s not easy to get there. My belief in the religion was strengthened there.”
Since Ntintili’s return from the Hajj more residents in the immediate community also started embracing Islam.
He believes the Muslim community is booming in Khayelitsha.
In 2012 Ntintili acquired the notorious shebeen for R18 000 on the busy Mew Way Road in Harare. Over the years he has turned it into a masjid (mosque) for 50 members, a madrasa (Islam school) with 45 young boys and girls, and has opened a soup kitchen.
A number of the shebeens in the area have closed down.
Several fatal incidents had occurred at the surrounding shebeen with drunk people walking into the main road and knocked down by speeding cars.
“A lot of people died here, and I’m glad our presence has brought about change,” he said.
Imani Xolani Donyeli is a witness to that change.
A regular shebeen patron who would leave his house in the mornings to return the next day from the same shebeen, Donyeli believes he is not the only person to benefit from the change brought about by the mosque.
“I used to spend all my hardearned money from my job as a security guard here,” he said, pointing around. “Meanwhile, my children in the Eastern Cape went hungry because I would spend everything on booze and snooker,” he said.
Donyeli, who lives just a stone’s throw away from the mosque, said he reluctantly converted to Islam after receiving a calling one day.
His hesitation was based on his fear that residents would gossip about him because he was a regular at the shebeen and had since joined the mosque, which is on the same site.
With the soup kitchen, Ntintili is trying to help Harare’s youth. Ntintili can be contacted at 078 362 7822 for help with his soup kitchen.