In 1993, Nomonde Ntuli* was shot, and lost an eye when ANC and IFP members clashed in Bhambayi. She was gang-raped twice ‘€“ once by ANC-aligned thugs then, three months later, by IFP-aligned thugs. Her son was shot. Her home was burnt down.

Today she has piece jobs a few days a week and is trying to get her life together again. But she battles to have relationships with men and struggles with feelings of hopelessness.

“When I first met Nomonde, she had a lot of desire for revenge. She really couldn’€™t see the future and felt that she was not accepted by her community in Bhambayi. She really hated men because of her experiences,” says Zandile Nhlengetwa of the KwaZulu-Natal Sinani Programme for the Survivors of Violence (PSV).

Another Bhambayi resident, Buyisile Shabane, her four daughters aged between 10 and 18 and her baby grandson were inside their home one Saturday morning in 1993 when a group of men came off the street and surrounded the place.

“They threw petrol bombs on the roof,” says Shabane, her eyes turned upwards, as she relives the experience. “Someone took a knobkerrie and broke the windows and threw the petrol inside. We were locked in and feared to go out because we could hear voices and we knew they were waiting for us.”

Shabane felt helpless because she was the only adult and the children depended on her, yet she felt they were all going to die.

“By now the fire was all over, so we ran out and scattered in different directions. As I ran out I heard one of the men saying that we are all women so they might as well leave us,” she says.

Shabane ran towards Phoenix but panicked when she realised her children were not with her. She retraced her steps, stepping over bodies of people who had been massacred and fearing all the time she would discover one of her own children among the dead.

“I searched all day and it was only in the middle of the night, after walking around calling and calling for them, that I found them. An Indian family in Phoenix had given them shelter. One had a broken wrist from jumping out of the window and another had been shot in the leg,” she says.

Her house was completely destroyed except for one wall. Her relatives came and helped her to build a temporary room using the one standing wall.

“What could I do? I had nowhere else to go, and I was unemployed,” she says.

Shabane’€™s anguish was compounded by the fact that her children and grandchildren were dependent on her for support yet she had nothing to offer them and felt broken and hopeless inside.

“I couldn’€™t make sense of what had happened to me. Everything seemed dark,” she said

For her, the weekly meetings started by the Programme for the Survivors of Violence (PSV) in her community offered the only possibility of hope.

Since 1994, PSV has run parallel weekly meetings, one in the ANC area and the other in the IFP aligned area of Bhambayi, both to encourage people to discuss what has happened to them and to start small income-generating projects to combat the serious poverty.

Jabulani “J” Lubanyana was 15 when violence came to Bhambayi and he joined the armed patrols of men and boys protecting their turf.

“I was an animal,” he says, looking far older than his 25 years. “I slept outside with the men because it was safer than being inside. Women would bring us food and put it altogether in a big plastic container. We would eat with our hands because the moment we heard gunshots we had to be ready,” he says.

Lubanyana says they would drink inteleze (muti) and that to make them strong and fearless. Then shortly before the 1994 election, the Peace Accord people drove around with loudhailers appealing to people to stop fighting, so Lubanyana’€™s group decided to talk.

“But by then I had become very aggressive. I would attack and hurt anyone. My family realised that I wasn’€™t thinking straight and I had lost my sense of direction,” he says.

Now Lubanyana is very concerned about current rising tensions between the ANC and IFP.

“What has been damaged by words, we can rectify with words rather than fighting,” says the former boy soldier, adding that both the ANC and the IFP are powerful organisations.

“If the leaders don’€™t see eye-to-eye, they must remember it impacts negatively on those on the ground. When two bulls fight, it is the grass that is trampled. Masses of people will be homeless, they will lose their jobs and relatives. Children will not go to school. There will be people with disabilities and traumas,” he says.

“This will affect the masses, not the leaders. They must think about us. I survived once when I was young, but I don’€™t think I will survive another war,” he adds.

Although Mthembeni Mthembu was only 10 when his community in Umbumbulu was plunged into conflict, it has had a massive detrimental effect on his life.

The youngest of 10 children, Mthembu’€™s seven brothers were all swept up by the violence and were forced to flee their jobs. As they were the family breadwinners, little Mthembeni was forced to drop out of school.

“My family, especially my brothers, scattered all over the place,” he says. “Things were very difficult because there was no money. I became a herd boy for my aunt and from that she was able to support me.”

Today Mthembu is 20, unemployed and with few prospects. He meets weekly with young people from Umbumbulu to discuss plans to start micro-businesses and has little time for political posturing.

“The leaders must realise that we put them there with a mandate to ensure economic development. We are unemployed and we expect our leadership to link with other countries and create jobs,” he says sadly.

It has taken PSV six years to get victims and perpetrators involved on opposite sides to sit together in the same room.

Recently, they have held healing workshops in which former enemies have met together over weekends and told their stories, acknowledging that they all suffered and were all traumatised.

“There was so must distrust. We had to earn people’€™s trust,” says Nhlengetwa, PSV’€™s Coastal Co-ordinator. “We had to allow them to test us, to postpone meetings many times for example, to check our commitment and consistency.

“After 1994, the self-defence units and self-protection units were demobilised. People felt empty and vulnerable and they had no sense of belonging.”

She says it was important not to force reconciliation but to work with both sides in the conflict.  After six  years, the two sides were only able to meet together  in combined meetings at a neutral venue to discuss common issues such as intolerance.

Speaking in her characteristically gentle way, Nhlengetwa stresses that “it will be a double blow for our communities if violence erupts again, especially in KwaZulu-Natal.

“People are already dying of AIDS, which has spread more easily because of how the violence destroyed communities. If there is violence again, then there will be two tragic events destroying our nation.

“It is important that we come together and fight the biggest enemy South Africa is facing, and that is HIV/AIDS.”

* not her real name.