Emmanuel Sithole’s mother Sara Machava with his first-born child, and his two widows in the background with his other two children in Nhachunga village, Mozambique.
Image by: BEAUREGARD TROMP
Image by: BEAUREGARD TROMP
In a tiny village in northern Mozambique, a desperately poor family is waiting for Emmanuel Sithole to return home.
The father of three had planned to travel back from South Africa last Sunday to escape the xenophobia sweeping parts of the country. But the day before he was due to leave he was beaten and fatally stabbed on the streets of Alexandra.
He will be coming home this week, but it will be in a coffin.
His grieving mother, Sara Machava, yesterday told of her sorrow: "My heart is tired and torn. It will be like this until he comes home."
Seated in her modest home, she said simply: "There will be suffering."
Sithole, who was 35 when he died, became a symbol of the xenophobic violence sweeping South Africa after photographs of his brutal murder were published in the Sunday Times last week.
The pictures made headlines across the globe, but for his family back home he was a husband, father and son. He was also the family's breadwinner.
A Sunday Times team travelled to his home in Nhachunga village, 400km southwest of Beira. There we found his family of three toddlers, two young wives and his distraught mother. They are deep in mourning for the man who dutifully sent money home every month. Now they have nothing. Sithole's dream of building them a brick home is over. The women said their hopes for the future died with him.
Sithole left for South Africa seven years ago so that he could provide a living for his family. When xenophobic violence erupted in 2008, he was reluctant to return home and stayed on. And last year, when a man stabbed him with a beer bottle on the streets of Alexandra and Sithole was hospitalised for weeks, he still refused to leave.
But on April 13 he told his first wife, Selina, that he was coming home. He said he would leave South Africa on Sunday April 19, and arrive two days later. That was all he said. Selina said she was used to his abrupt, serious manner. He was never doting or overly affectionate, but he was a good husband and a good provider, ensuring she, three-year-old Josiah, one-year-old Jeremiah, his second wife Isabel and her one-year-old daughter Selina wanted for nothing.
Sithole could only visit home occasionally, staying away for six months at a time. He lived frugally so that he could send home food, clothes and around R1300 in cash every month.
On the morning of April 18, a Saturday, Sithole rose, as usual, before first light broke over his 3m² shack crammed between countless more in a Mozambican corner of Alexandra . He and his friend Matteo had heard the noise from the nearby Madala hostel the night before and were afraid, but they still headed to the market to sell their wares. Sithole was saving for his trip back home and his plan to build a brick home.
The first thing Selina knew of the unfolding tragedy was when she got a call from Titos, Emmanuel's younger brother, at midday.
He told her four young men had passed Emmanuel Sithole's stall and stolen his cigarettes. When he pursued them, the young men turned on him and beat, stabbed and chased him, then left him to die.
Selina fell down, beside herself. "I lost control," she said softly, seated on the dirt floor with Jeremiah nursing at her breast. "He was a good husband. I was happy with him. Today, I've lost."
In Nhachunga, down many roads that thread into the Mozambican midlands, life and death are determined by the seasons. This year the crops failed. Those with money will make it through by buying their food. Those with livestock will sell some to ensure their bellies are not empty. Those with nothing but their crops will starve, said Sithole's mother.
She said the family had to give her son a proper send-off but providing for neighbours and family from other provinces would likely deplete the reserves the family had left.
Machava has many questions, like whether those who killed Sithole will be made to pay reparations, as they would have had to do in Mozambique.
The reason Sithole had left his family when he was 28 was to provide them with a better life and raise enough money to finally marry.
Following the path of thousands of his countrymen, he crossed the border illegally, paying R100 for the privilege of entering South Africa. When he earned enough, he paid the lobola for his first wife.
By the time his father died last year, Sithole was doing well enough to take a second wife, Isabel, who he met during a visit home.
The family have not told his three children about their father's death. They are too young to know Daddy isn't coming home.
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