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Beauregard Tromp, Khanyi Ndabeni and Simphiwe Nkwali
What turns a young man with a loving mother into the kind of person who mercilessly attacked Emmanuel Sithole? Sunday Times reporters visited four homes in Alexandra to find tales of loss, poverty, despair and absent fathers. “Killa”. The word is etched on the wooden table as Tshitshi Bhengu fumbles her hands in the lap of her hand-sewn dress, trying to figure out where to start.

She has been thinking of killing herself. The shame.

Last Saturday morning, after a night of drinking at Madala Hostel and looting nearby foreign-owned shops, her son Mthintha Bhengu plunged a knife into Emmanuel Sithole.

Hours later he joined his mother and seven siblings, cracking jokes, waiting for Tshitshi to finish cooking their meal.

After the deaths of her husband and other close relatives, Tshitshi could no longer provide for her herself and her four children by selling bundles of wood by the roadside at their home in Msinga, near Tugela Ferry in KwaZulu-Natal. So she headed to Jozi.

It had to be better there. Neighbours had long stopped lending her money or giving her food. Without a man to support her, how would she repay them, they argued.

At Madala Hostel, where tribal tradition is infused with township hustle, Tshitshi and her children were offered refuge in her husband’s old room. Here, she believed, her children could go to school and have a better life. That was 13 years ago.

“I couldn’t even afford to buy my children school uniforms,” she said.

“I thought life would be much better here. My aim was to get a job and raise my children properly and send them to school, as I never went to school.”

Work was hard to find. She met a man with whom she had four more children.

She remembers her children’s births by the historic events of the time – the release of Nelson Mandela, the first democratic election, the Soccer World Cup.

The child-support grants were hardly enough to feed the family, who all shared that single room. Her older children dropped out of school, trying to find work to help the family.

Mthintha made it as far as Grade 4. Known for his short temper as a boy, he landed in trouble with the authorities for assault and spent six months in jail.

After he was released in 2013, Mthintha never held down a job for longer than a few months. One year after his jail stretch, he moved out of the room he shared with three of his brothers because it was too small.

He moved to a new place, and on Monday police broke down the door of that room. Two days later, one of his roommates, a man in a red T-shirt and sleeper earrings, said: “We never saw him on Friday.”

Another roommate concurred. Their eyes moved shiftily up and down a passageway strewn with broken furniture and rubbish. Later the man in the red T-shirt admitted they were together on Friday night, drinking at Madala Hostel.

“But I left early to go home to sleep,” he said. Mthintha was a good man and worked with them at the nearby carwash, his roommates said.

Police traced Mthintha to his mother’s room in Madala hostel, yanking Tshitshi (above)around, demanding answers. Then he strolled in.

“They never even knew it was him they were looking for, until he gave himself up,” Tshitshi said.

On Friday, Mthintha’s older brother, Gadonkuhle (25) had warned him to be careful. Gadonkuhle said on Saturday, just like any other day, Mthintha had shown up at the family’s room, showing no sign of what had happened earlier that morning. Even now, Gadonkuhle believes it was just a mistake.

On Tuesday, watching a neighbour’s TV, Tshitshi saw the pictures of Mthintha that were taken during the attack on Sithole.

“I could see it was him holding the knife. I know him. He’s my child. I knew he had anger problems but didn’t know which door to knock for help,” she said.

She wishes she could apologise to the Sithole family for her son’s actions, but she is too ashamed to face them. For once, her belly is not aching with hunger, because she is numbed by the pain of her son’s deeds.

“Maybe if we had a father things would have been better,” said his brother.

‘I knew the man they killed’

Fikile Sibiya’s display cabinet is filled with pictures of her children. One of them is Ayanda (17) bright-eyed in his crisp school uniform. His Grade 11 school books fill the bottom of the cabinet.

Outside his mother’s tiled shack, in the narrow alleys that zig-zag in the shadows of Madala Hostel (above), he is known as “Zakes”.

It was Zakes who sprinted up to Sithole, who was already on his knees, and landed a kick on the Mozambican on Saturday morning. Then Zakes pulled out a butcher’s knife. A hand clutching his wrist prevented him from doing more.

“I knew the man they killed. Every morning I would buy sweets from him before catching a taxi to work,” said his mother.

A fridge, the display cabinet, a narrow couch and a double bed are crammed into the room. Because of the lack of space here, Ayanda, the eldest of Fikile’s three children, slept at the hostel with relatives.

But the rest of the time he could usually be found at his family home, fetching his sister from crèche, doing chores or watching movies.

Fikile is a strict mother who gave Ayanda little room to get caught up in mischief. But last year she noticed he was keeping company with a group of mostly unemployed young men in their 20s.

“I asked him: ‘If I had to look for you and ask who are your friends, your real friends, what can you say?’”

Still, her son never smelt of alcohol or cigarette smoke and remained obedient. Then came the rap at the door. It was the police.

Fikile came to this room in Alexandra 11 years ago, also from Msinga. She was going to build a life for herself and her son, away from the misery and poverty of home. Looking up from her TV, Fikile is unforgiving.

“I brought him here to get a better education, so that he can speak better English than me and have a better job. My child … how much I struggled raising him alone,” she said.

“The law must take its course. If he is guilty, he must be punished.”

“A better life”

In the picture the two young men pose before a lush fir forest, blue-grey mountains rising beyond and the open sky speckled with clouds. At their feet lies a knock-off Persian rug. The picture of Sfundo Shezi and a friend was taken recently, in an unknown photographic studio.

On Sunday, Sfundo was also in a picture, this time wielding a wrench, striking repeatedly at Sithole.

Music blares in the house as his mother, Zamile Mzimela, watches Soccer Zone on a discoloured TV screen. The hashtag “saynotoxenophobia” flashes repeatedly.

A week ago on Friday night, over supper, Sfundo told his mother he was going to sleep at Madala Hostel. She warned him not to get involved in the looting.

“I told him even though I’m poor I do not want anything stolen in this house,” she said.

“I didn’t like what these people were doing and even said he must not even think of bringing stolen goods in this house.”

When she saw him on Saturday, he was limping. “He said he dislocated his ankle joint from running. He didn’t say what he was running from.”

It has been 16 years since Zamile moved from her home in Nkandla to try to eke out a better life for herself and her sons here in Alexandra. She has also been supporting her ailing mother back home.

Her husband was shot dead during a family feud when Sfundo was six months old. Initially her boys stayed at their rural home with their grandmother, and Sfundo only joined his mother in Alexandra three years ago.

As a cleaner at a construction company, Zamile earns R790 every fortnight and pays R200 rent for her tiny room.

Sfundo dropped out of school in Grade 7 and has since worked as a painter. His mom has been saving up so that he could get a driver’s licence and possibly get a better job.

Sfundo’s elder brother, Sabelo, has a job, and the family get by. The two brothers share the double bed while Zamile sleeps on the floor beside them. This is how they slept on Saturday night.

As she sits on the bed fingering her “I love Jesus” bracelet, Zamile’s eyes well up.

“A good boy”

Through the only hole in Jannette Maseko’s roof a ray of sunlight comes to rest inside an empty bucket at her doorway. There is food on the stove but Jannette cannot eat. They say her son is a killer.

She only realised there was trouble when neighbours up the road started complaining that police were beating them, looking for Sizwe Ngomezulu.

By the standards of many of her neighbours, Jannette’s home is spacious. There is room for two beds, two wardrobes, a kitchen table and even a kitchen counter.

This is the home Sizwe (20) was raised in. When he was young his father still lived with the family, being absent only when his job as a long-distance truck driver took him away. But now his father has other wives.

The only time Jannette has contact with him is when she has to go to court to demand more maintenance to look after their five children. Jannette is largely immobile as a result of illness.

In 2012, when he was in Grade 9, Sizwe dropped out of school to care for his mother and younger siblings.

At 10am on Saturday, barely an hour after Sithole was declared dead, Sizwe was at home to prepare food for his mother. He spent most of the rest of that day entertaining his younger nephew.

“I asked him to fix my TV aerial. He didn’t show any signs of being terrified,” said Jannette.

He did not tell them what he had been doing earlier that day. Sizwe had been with Mthintha, Sfundo and Zakes.

When the other three attacked Sithole, Sizwe repeatedly reached into his belt – it is not clear what he was reaching for.

Perhaps it was the man in the overalls who tried to intervene, perhaps it was the man in the black leather jacket who shouted for them to stop, or perhaps it was the presence of photographer James Oatway, capturing their actions on camera, that gave Sizwe pause. But at that stage of the attack, his hands remained empty.

Jannette refuses to believe that her son could have participated in the attack. He is a good boy. –www.sundaytimes.co.za