Johannesburg -
Moscow Mokgomola surveyed the charred wreckage of his home.
He looked at the spots where his two best friends had burnt to death.
The only possessions he had left were the clothes on him.
On Sunday afternoon, his friends and family described him as a broken man, someone who had lost everything - emotionally and physically.
Wiping his eyes on his navy-blue golf shirt, Mokgomola began to explain how his brother, Frans Rampedi, and his cousin, Bethuel Selopyane, who he lived with in a tiny shack in Ivory Park, had died.
It had all started with a drunken fight on Saturday evening, he said.
At around 10pm, he, Rampedi and another relative got into a drunken spat with another neighbour.
Partying and having fun was the order of the day for the three men.
“Having fun would be the main thing I would remember about them. They were fun,” said Mokgomola.
The fight with a neighbour ended with a threat - “I will end you all”.
Just after midnight, Rampedi and Selopyane had gone to bed, while Mokgomola continued partying with a neighbour just up the street.
Then he saw massive flames coming from their shack. He ran towards the burning building, but a loud explosion kept him back.
There was also another thing holding him back - the fear of seeing his best friends burning to death.
“I didn’t want to see them like that,” he explained.
He called neighbours, who tried to douse the flames, but they could tell it was too late.
When the emergency services (EMS) arrived, it was only to douse the remaining flames. The men were badly burnt and died before medics could reach them.
On Sunday afternoon, Mokgomola and his family stood around the charred shack.
They discovered a small amount of clothes and two photo albums that had been protected from the blaze by a cupboard. Everything else was in cinders.
Other neighbours said they now lived in fear of something like this happening to them.
The EMS’s Robert Mulaudzi confirmed that they had responded to a call where two people were burnt “beyond recognition”.
In a separate incident, he said, a man died of smoke inhalation in his shack in Orange Farm around 3am on Sunday.
Police confirmed investigators were looking into the causes of both fires.
Meanwhile in Soweto, girls living at the Salvation Army’s Carl Sithole Children’s Home lost their home when one of the residences housing about 12 girls was gutted.
Major Carin Holmes, PR secretary of the Southern African Territory of The Salvation Army, said that none of the residents of the home were hurt in the fire.
However, all the girls’ clothing, bedding, curtaining and personal possessions, such as family photos and schoolbooks, were destroyed.
“The loss of their personal possessions is a big blow to the girls,” Holmes said.
She added that new uniforms and books would have to be purchased for them.
The girls will be accommodated in other residences at the home in the meantime.
- The Star