When soft-spoken theatre nurse Nomalungelo Konza lay critically ill in GF Jooste Hospital's medical ward in 2003, her colleagues prepared for the worst.
Her body weak from tuberculosis, she lay semi-comatose and many believed she would not pull through.
'Morning Virginia! How are you? How's the Kaletra? Okay?' the diminutive woman hollers across the clinic passage.
Macassar residents have grown accustomed to seeing the figures of Emma van der Merwe, tall and upright, towering over her colleague Barbara de Wet, walking the streets of the Helderberg suburb, come rain or shine.
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