Zondani Magwebu bites his lower lip and stares out the front door of his one-roomed house in Khayelitsha’€™s Kuyasa neighbourhood. Dusk is settling over the dusty street outside his green-painted house and high pitched shrieks of playing children pierce the early evening calm.

A stout middle-aged man, Magwebu’€™s mouth forms the words he strings together, but his eyes express the pain, confusion and anger that has settled over his family since the death of his wife, Noluthando.

The Magwebu family’€™s story appeared in the Cape Times in September 2005 when Zondani , who opted to remain anonymous then, shared the circumstances that had left their three children without a mother and him devastated.

At the time, Magwebu revealed details of how agents working for discredited German vitamin seller Matthias Rath’€™s foundation arrived at his home asking to see Noluthando, who had earlier been diagnosed HIV positive.

Rath had arrived in South Africa in 2004 and, with the help of community organizations such as the South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco), vigorously marketed his Vita Cell multivitamins as an alternative to antiretrovirals. Khayelitsha was one of his main targets.

Magwebu said doctors had told Noluthando that she did not yet need antiretroviral drugs but the young woman had been receiving prophylactic treatment to ward off tuberculosis and pneumonia as well multi-vitamins from the local clinic. ‘€œShe had ulcers, but that was it,’€ he recalled.

He said that the two Rath women, who were also members of Sanco convinced his wife that the Rath Foundation’€™s pills ‘€œwould make the HIV much better’€.

‘€œShe was told to take 10 tablets in the morning and 10 in the evening. The day after she had started taking it she became very dizzy and incoherent. She vomited and became weaker and weaker. We took her to the (government) clinic where the doctor advised her to not take the Rath medicine, but to rather continue with her other medication,’€ said Magwebu.

Magwebu says he is convinced that she didn’€™t stop taking the pills as he worked long hours and could not monitor her medication. Her condition continued to deteriorate. She died within three weeks in GF Jooste Hospital’€™s medical ward.

With the help of Sanco, Rath had managed to set up so-called clinics in 2005 and was openly sharing details of the ‘€œclinical trials’€ he had been conducting in Khayelitsha. Reports were surfacing of HIV positive people desperate for a ‘€œcure’€ who had been easily persuaded to take the Rath vitamins in the place of antiretrovirals or prophylactic medication, which keeps life-threatening infections at bay.

The Treatment Action Campaign challenged Rath on several occasions in court, but it would take four long years before the courts would finally order that the German stop conducting any further trials and that government investigate his activities.

National Health Department Director General Thami Mseleku had claimed on several occasions that government was busy investigating Rath and found no reason to prosecute him. However, it was subsequently revealed in court that the ‘€œinvestigation’€ had involved two telephone calls, both to Rath employees.

Magwebu confirms that no one ever contacted him to try and establish the circumstances around Nolunthando’€™s death. ‘€œNobody has been here to try and explain to me what happened or to just hear my story,’€ he said.

Visiting Magwebu on the eve of World Aids Day 2008, he is shadow of the man Health-e interviewed in 2005. He looks tired and gaunt, he doesn’€™t smile easily and appears pensive and worried.

The tiny house, which had been lovingly decorated by Noluthando, is now a bare structure with two wooden benches, a non-functioning fridge in one corner and a kitchen area in the other.

The smell of burning porridge hangs thick in the air as Mawegbu’€™s eldest Bulelani (14) stirs a dented pot of porridge over a two-plate stove. His elder sister Landiswa (11) plays with a skipping rope across the road while little Asiphe (5) lurks nearby.

‘€œSince my wife moved on, things have been bad here,’€ he sighs, staring at the floor.

‘€œIt is increasingly difficult for me to look after the children. I am working as a builder, but while I am away things go wrong at home, things go wrong at school and I am not coping. It has been difficult.’€

Magwebu is clear that Noluntando would have still been alive if she hadn’€™t taken the high doses of vitamins that she had been advised to take by the Rath agents. ‘€œIt is very, very difficult for me to think about how it could have been. It is very difficult for the youngest one, for Asiphe. She needs her mother. The older ones are able to look after themselves.

‘€œThey try to cook, but they’€™re not the greatest cooks,’€ says Magwebu, flashing a rare smile.

‘€œTheir mother would have sorted things out, but I can’€™t help, I worry about the little one all the time.’€

Asked about his own health, Magwebu pauses: ‘€œI am feeling okay. Health wise I am okay, but I worry a lot. I worry about work. I am a builder and at the moment I have no work. The kids have no clothes to wear. Christmas is coming and I have nothing to give them.

‘€œI have not been for a (health) check-up for a long time, but I think I am okay.’€

Magwebu then leans forward and says: ‘€œI can definitely tell you. I for one will not take any tablets. I don’€™t trust tablets anymore. I saw what happened to my wife. If I ever had to fall ill, they will have to give me an injection, but tablets are not an option.

‘€œI do acknowledge that the tablets they (Rath agents) gave her were wrong, but I cannot get myself to take tablets. I am confused. At the moment I also cannot think of going to a clinic. I guess if I become really ill for one reason or another in the future I will force myself to go, but for now I can’€™t think of that.’€

Asked whether he held any grudges, Magwebu nods: ‘€œI don’€™t want to lie to you. I know there is very little I can do, but I do wish I could lay charges. Rath must be arrested as he carries responsibility for the death of my wife and many other people.’€

Magwebu feels that the government needs to take some responsibility. ‘€œOf course I am living in a country where I cannot take the law into my own hands, but I do feel that government needs to be held accountable for what happened here. Maybe someone else can charge government, because I don’€™t think I can. If government knew what was happening and they did nothing, they need to be held accountable.

 ‘€œWhen I think of the future it gets tricky for me. Sometimes I think I need to find a companion, but it has its own complications. Perhaps the children need someone, especially the girls. They need a woman in the house. I sometimes get confused about what the right thing is to do. With Bulelani it is fine, I know what to do.

‘€œI can tell you, this thing is in my head all the time.’€

Diagonally across the road from Magwebu, a light shines through the single window at the front of house 56202. Inside Nandipha Sigebenga sits on a single bed which serves the dual purpose of couch in the day and bed at night for her four daughters and grandchild.

A poster mounted above the bed dominates the front part of the tiny house, proclaiming: ‘€œI wish a long life to all my enemies so they may see all my successes.’€

In 2005 Sigebenga, who also opted to remain anonymous then, shared the horror story of her younger sister Norah’€™s death.

She had just returned from burying her sister in the Cofimvaba in the Eastern Cape. At the time she was unequivocal that when the two Rath women arrived at their home, they handed Norah her death certificate.

Norah, a security guard, had been sickly for some time and had been treated for various infections, including tuberculosis.

On March 16, Norah arrived home and told Sigebenga that two women had introduced her to new medication. ‘€œShe said that they were going to observe her for two months and that she would get better,’€ said Sigebenga.

The women took her to a Sanco-Rath clinic in Site C. ‘€œShe was told to strip down and she was photographed from various angles. She also told me that they put her on a drip for the whole day. When she got home, I could see her face and hands were swollen. She had to take 14 tablets every day,’€ Sigebenga said at the time.

‘€œShe was dizzy. She would vomit. She grew weak, she lost her appetite and she told me she was losing her senses. She couldn’€™t even go to the toilet,’€ Sigebenga recalled through tears.

Sigebenga still stands by her claims that Matthias Rath personally visited their house when her sister grew distressed over the fact that she was not getting better and demanded to see a doctor.

‘€œHe sat in that chair,’€ says a resolute Sigebenga, pointing at a chair next to the front door.

 ‘€œMy sister was really sick, but he told me she was fine and that their pills would soon take effect,’€ she says.

One night, three weeks after starting on the vitamins, Norah vomited non-stop but believed that this was a sign that her body was being cleansed of the disease. When Sigebenga called an ambulance, Thandi refused to get into it. She told her sister that she had been instructed by the Rath women not to go to hospital but to visit their clinic in an emergency.

A few hours later she was dead. Five hours after her death, one of the Rath women arrived and without asking for permission or offering her condolences, she removed all the medication, even the empty containers, erasing any traces of Norah’€™s treatment.

A tall, no-nonsense woman, Sigebenga’€™s eye mist over behind her black-framed spectacles: ‘€œI try to close this chapter, but it is not easy. It has taken me two years to get back on track again and it’€™s hard for me to think she is gone, sometimes I think it’€™s all just a horrible nightmare and she will walk through the front door again.’€

‘€œNow you can go into the streets and there is no trace of any of those people who used to work for Rath. They are nowhere to be seen. Strangely enough, I have forgiven them. Even if Rath had to come to my house I would invite him in.’€

She grows animated as she continues: ‘€œBut I would have some questions for him. I will ask him ‘€“ ‘€˜When you went around giving people these tablets, did you know it was killing people, destroying their lives?’€™ This is what I want to know.’€

‘€œI know Manto (former Health Minister Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang) spoke about garlic and all those things at the time, but I find it absolutely shocking that they might have known what Rath was up to. I ask myself how they could have allowed him to do this to us.’€

Sigebenga says she longs for closure, but that it has been hard to find it with nobody attempting to answer their burning questions.

She walks to the back of her house and returns with a photograph of chubby, smiling boy in khaki pants and a t-shirt: ‘€œOne day I will have to tell Norah’€™s son what happened to his mother. What do I tell him? It is not easy to find these answers,’€ she sighs.

‘€œHe looks to me for the answers and right now, I don’€™t have those answers.’€

Rath finally left South Africa in 2006 and according to reports he has now turned his sights on Russia. Another Rath ally, the Traditional Healers Organisation continues to distribute Rath Foundation booklets in KwaZulu-Natal with unconfirmed reports that patients are still reporting to government clinics having been offered Rath’€™s Vita Cell.