Every death in our city leaves hole that cannot be filled

THIS time, it’s personal. I don’t want it to be, but there it is. The universe doesn’t work according to my wishes.

Apologies upfront for the occasional lapse into first person and for the sample of one.

On a Friday night, two weekends ago, a good mate and I met to drink some locallybrewed beer and chat about my most recent article on murder statistics for our bay.

Why so high? Poverty, unemployment, drugs, gangs, lost youth, population density, race, apartheid, colonisation, culture of violence, or just human nature? What’s to be done? How do we make life sacred? The next evening, Saturday, same mate, different pub, with another two mates to watch the Bokke sink Allister Coetzee’s chances of redemption, followed by watching the All Blacks show why they’re in a class of their own. Game over and home to bed. On Sunday at 4.20am I answer a call from the number of one of the mates I watched the rugby with.

A good soul and someone I got to know really well while standing next to a high school rugby field shouting what we hoped were informed rugby instructions to boys on the field who always seemed to do the opposite!

I assumed my fellow coach had a puncture and needed help.

There is a pause and then my mate’s mother responds: “Archie has passed!”

Doubt, incredulity, confusion, “but I was just with him”, a hundred thoughts scrum through my mind simultaneously as I confirm that “passed” means what I fear it does.

In the early hours of Sunday November 12, Archie Athenkosi Mabandla died from a blow to his head.

Archie hadn’t gone straight home after the rugby.

He lived in Gqebera/Walmer Township, and joined a few friends and his nephew for a beer at a local tavern a few blocks from home.

There are two stories: one says he intervened in a fight to save a friend from being beaten, and the men involved ambushed and killed him later.

The other story is that he was involved in a minor bumper-bashing and that the occupants of the other car killed him in anger.

The truth is still obscure, but what matters is that my gentle giant of a friend was killed by thugs within walking distance of his home for what appears to be a matter of little concern.

Archie was about to propose to his girlfriend, Kayla Vrolik (he was doing the behind-the-scenes groundwork to set it up for January).

His mother, Lizzett Mabandla, can make no sense of her son’s death: “He was a good boy,” she says.

His nephew, Aphiwe Mabandla, who lived in the same home and was more of a younger brother, has lost his mentor.

But most tragic of all is that Archie had a one-yearold son, Sithenkosi, who is now without a father.

Archie had two siblings – sister Wendy Nomvuyiseko Shuta, and brother Lubabalo Mabandla, and was also uncle to Thulisa Mabandla, Loyiso Shuta and Yonela Shuta, among all the other lives he impacted upon. The community responded. One of the alleged attackers was caught, beaten badly and rescued just in time to prevent the tyre – already placed around his neck – from being lit.

Apparently, the charge office was covered in his blood.

But that person has now been released without charge and no-one seems to know why.

The other three alleged perpetrators are either in hiding or are on the run.

There are mumblings about “foreigners” and a Zimbabwean was allegedly killed the following Monday night.

In retribution? No one knows; no one is saying.

The week before Archie’s passing I’d written about the 500-plus murders on average per annum in our city, where each of the communities around Kwazakhele, New Brighton and Bethelsdorp lose between 80 and 90 people annually to murder. It was a helicopter view. Now I have no interest in numbers and averages; there is only a single name that matters.

Archie cared deeply about his community.

He loved rugby, he played for the local Walmer club side (and recently a Despatch side) regularly, and he helped coach the Walmer High rugby teams.

That Saturday night, we were talking about our big plans of channelling the latent rugby talent in Walmer Township through an academy that would start in primary school, feed the high school and culminate in the local club.

Archie was convinced that if we found the kids early enough there were future Springboks in the township. His death makes no sense. It robs that family and community of a vital and positive resource.

It entrenches an ongoing cycle of violence and death.

I’ve subsequently started having conversations with people about murder in their communities.

A paint contractor who runs his own business and lives in Gqebera has a brother recovering in hospital.

The brother was woken in the early hours of the morning to find someone standing at the foot of the bed.

He called out and was savaged with a machete by the intruder (a youngster, high on drugs).

He is lucky to be alive – this time the universe decided to be kind.

A waiter at my “coffice” (a well-known coffee shop in Richmond Hill) says murder and attacks are so commonplace in his community that people have become so numbed by its regularity, it’s as if bodies are simply swept to one side, the blood mopped up, so that people can keep on with the party.

An inconvenience, not an aberration!

It’s a human coping mechanism – we blind ourselves to that for which we have no answer. Out of sight, out of mind. There are plenty of instant, just-add-blame answers to the question of why?

God’s will – blame a deity/ any other (external) unknown.

People will do anything for money/drugs/power – blame human nature.

It’s a township (and by implication, a black) thing, or an apartheid legacy (and by implication, a white) thing – blame location, race or culture.

Police/politicians/government have failed in making communities safe – blame people in authority.

It’s a known high-crime area; he was out late; he should have been at home, not drinking with mates at a tavern – blame the victim.

But blame will not bring my friend Archie back.

His mother has outlived her child.

His nephew has lost his model of a good man.

It’s simply not the way it’s meant to work.

Bad people are meant to die, not good people. Parents are meant to die before their children. This is Nelson Mandela Bay in 2017. Archie Mabandla, son, father, brother, uncle, front-row player and coach, age 31, born 08/12/1986 died 13/11/2017. It makes no sense; I have no answers. He was my friend and he leaves a hole that cannot be filled, as with every other death in our city.

What matters is that my gentle giant of a friend was killed by thugs within walking distance from his home for what appears to be a matter of little concern