BONAKELE Mtshali was away at a funeral when flash floods on South Africa’s east coast swept her iron-roof shack off the hillside in Lindelani township, taking two of her girls with it.
She had been searching with a growing sense of foreboding since Monday’s disaster. Then her elder son, Zamani, 23, got a call on Thursday from some other townspeople who had discovered a body by the river. It was Baphiwe, her 17-year-old.
Mtshali’s daughter was one of about 400 people, possibly more, killed in extremely powerful rains that battered the coast, leaving about 13,600 people homeless and numerous families in mourning for lost relatives.
There is no sign of Mtshali’s 11-year-old daughter, Ntwenhle. She has lost hope of finding her alive in her township by a river on the outskirts of Durban, the port city at the epicentre of the floods that have upended the lives of 40,000 people.
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