Help has come for Sethu Mxadana, 29, who escaped with her infant from being burned alive at their Unit P family home when a relative apparently set the house alight.
Neighbours posted on social media about the mother and baby who is now homeless and without clothes and food.
Mxadana said the incident occurred amid a toxic relationship with the relative, with whom she lived in her aunt’s house before the aunt died.
She said her relative’s behaviour changed when he became a man.
“He started smoking, something that was so out of character for him.
“From there he escalated onto drugs which made him very aggressive and wild, to such an extent he would abuse me.
“Eventually I got a protection order against him,” she said.
Mxadana said their relationship worsened further after her mother died in Johannesburg.
She said: “When my mom died we were only told of her death long after her funeral.
“We never got a chance to attend it.
“It appears her death may have taken its toll on my relative – who has been acting out [having antisocial outbursts] ever since. Maybe he’s bitter or still needs closure, but he has taken out his frustrations with drugs and he sells anything he can get his hands on to sustain his habit.”
She believes that in September, while she and
her child lay asleep at midnight, her relative torched the house and fled.
“I woke up when my child and I were coughing. We were choking from smoke.
“When I opened the bedroom door, the house was ablaze. I wrapped my child in blankets and threw her out the window about three metres away to save her from the fire, while I called for help. In the interim I hid in the hole in the house my relative made when he dug out the bathtub to sell, until the fire fighters arrived,” she said.
Mxadana said she asked her local councillor for support but got none.
However, she received support from Keith Ngesi Radio, when Ngesi heard of her plight from social media.
“They owned my problem and made it theirs. They knocked on doors I didn’t know about so my daughter and I could be clothed and fed, and for that I’m very grateful.”
Ngesi, a Christian journalist and former Buffalo City Metro spokesman, said he had left messages for the local councillor, who never responded.
Ngesi then took the matter to the speaker’s office and to the department of social development, which helped Mxadana get a new identity documentation and food parcels.
“Help has come from as far as the United States, after a listener was touched by her story and donated R3,500,” he said.
Mxadana is still living with a neighbour and is appealing for further assistance to rehabilitate her home...