Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
School celebrates 21 sets of twins
Once considered an ill omen in Zulu culture, today they are feted
AS YOU walk into Nqobane Primary School in Mamdekazi, near Pinetown in KwaZulu-Natal, you feel as if you’re seeing double – and you are. The school has 21 sets of twins.
Every grade has a set of twins.
The school – which was launched in 1976 – last week hosted an event dubbed “Celebrating a Rare Movement Twin Project”.
The school’s principal, Nkosinathi Zondo, said this was the first time the school had had twins from Grade R all the way up to Grade 7.
“When we realised earlier this year that we had 21 sets of twins, we thought we should celebrate this great and rare occurrence that has never happened in the history of our school.
“We decided to celebrate this historic event in Women’s Month because there is no one else who can do produce twins except women.
“And so we decided to call the mothers of these twins to celebrate this historic moment,” he said.
Zondo said it was a blessing to lead a school which had so many twins.
“In archaic Zulu culture, if a woman gave birth to twins, one would be killed because they were deemed to be a bad omen.
“But today we are glad that despicable tradition has been done away with and now we can celebrate this great gift of life,” he said.
But the “gift” also causes confusion. Zondo said he would often assign a task to a pupil and later he would bump into a pupil’s twin and ask them why they had not done the task, unaware that he was speaking to the wrong pupil.
“Sometimes the twins are so identical that they even have the same teeth,” he said.
Simphizwe and Phiwokuhle Vilakazi, 13, Silindokuhle and Lindokuhle Gumede, 11, Anele and Ayanda Hlongwane, 12, are the most difficult to identify, said their teacher, Zodwa Hadebe.
However, she does not struggle to identify them any more because she has been teaching the pairs since Grade R.
“They are not children that give us any problems, they are just like any children – mischievous at times, but they do not give us any problems that are difficult to manage,” said Hadebe.
Hadebe said the twins were connected in such a way that when one was not feeling well, you could sometimes sense the distress and pain in the other twin.
One set of twins, Anele and Ayanda Vilakazi, both want to become fashion designers.
“I am the most fashionable and Anele copies my style, she copies everything I do, even the idea to become fashion designers came from me,” claimed Ayanda.
She wished that one day she and her sister could own a fashion house where they designed and made clothes for twins.
“We want to make clothes for twins, but not clothes that look the same – clothes that show that even though we are alike and in fact identical, our fashion senses and styles are totally different,” said Ayanda.
The mother of the only triplets at the school, Nomthandazo Madlala, 43, said that initially she did not think her children – Neliswa, Siyamthanda and Simphiwe – would live this long.
“It is amazing to see them grown so much, they are good children who protect each other at all times,” she said.