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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 April 2025
zenzile continues her conversation with Nkulunkulu.
zenzile: Ufile? … Dead? … Mina? Can you imagine? [Chuckles derisively.] No, that child didn't know me, Nkulunkulu. If she did, she would have known she can't get rid of me that easily. And now what, eh? What must I do? My grant money was no longer coming. How was I going to eat? Pay my rent here? How was I going to send money to Dudu, who still lives there in Ipharadesi and is helping me to finish my house? You remember, I’m rebuilding a two-room in the rural areas where I was born, but that house, that house of mine hayi bandla ayipheli.
Especially now with these rains you have been punishing us with, Nkulunkulu … eish, they say those floods washed away half of my house. That's why I turn to you each night, Nkulunkulu, and I beg you … please, Nkulunkulu … please just switch off those taps in the sky … please, Nkulunkulu, grant me the strength to return home now and finish building my house.
For too many years I waited on that list for a RDP house … twenty years. Angiqambi amanga. No, I couldn't wait any longer. Yah, I’ve seen too many people waiting their whole lives and it never happens.
Before this, I was sending Dudu money at the end of the month so she could buy bricks and get her sons Dumisane and Sizwe to lay them for me. I was making my beadwork and selling my bracelets laphaya ebeachfront. With the money I was making, I was paying off those bricks one by one. My social grant money was also helping, but after the Home Affairs told me I was deceased, I haven't been able to send anything for a long time.
Ey, Nkulunkulu, it's difficult for me to visit Ipharadesi to go and see the work Dudu's boys are doing on my house. [Beat.] It's expensive to travel all that way in the taxi and the floods have washed away the road.
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