On the evening of February 10, 1990, a few hours before Nelson Mandela was due to be released from Robben Island, Nkosinathi Innocent Maphumulo's life changed forever.
Maphumulo, better known by his stage name Black Coffee, joined “The Diary of A CEO” to speak on his journey to becoming one of the most popular and sought after DJs in the world. The topic of Coffee's paralysed arm was the most fascinating aspect of the hour-long podcast.
"It's a story that was, for years, hard for me to share. "I'm in a better space now where I'm able to talk about it,“ he said.
The 45-year-old DJ then went on to explain how on that evening, after dinner, he and his cousins heard people marching past their home and singing joyously in celebration of Mandela's imminent release.
Despite his grandma’s strictness when it came to letting them out at night, on this particular day she allowed them to go outside to witness the scenes of jubilation.
A short while later, his cousins went back in the house, but a 14-year-old Coffee chose to stay out and enjoy the occasion.
"The crowd was going to a stadium which was close to my house. That's where the camping and singing until the morning was gonna be. They were on the streets basically gathering more crowds and we were now close to the stadium."
Then, out of nowhere, a car came speeding towards them and rammed through the crowd. "I was not in the front but I was maybe 20% in and I just blacked out. People were screaming and when I woke up there was fire, people were angry."
"Basically this driver switched off his lights to literally just kill people with his car. So they burned the car, and they burned the guy too."
The DJ then explains how he was taken to hospital and upon his return a few hours later he saw the charred body of the driver still on the side of the road uncovered.
"I don't think the car reached me. I don't think it actually touched me. I think (it was) the force of the people that were in front, because of the impact they pushed so hard. So what happened is, I dislocated my shoulder, but severely. I had no bruises, no cuts, it just came off. Meaning my nerves that connect the arm to the body snapped.”
“Being in a small town when I went to the hospital no one knew what to do. So I’m there holding my arm. They don’t know if it’s broken they don’t know what to do with it so they just gave me a sling and pain tablets and I went back home.”
But the pain never subsided. The following day he left his township of Ngangelizwe in Mthatha and headed for Durban where he ended up staying at a hospital for three months. But they didn’t know what to do either.
“The injury is called brachial plexus, which is the damage of nerves. There’s nothing you can do to fix damaged nerves, they can only fix themselves.”
He went on to add that he’s gained about 40% mobility and feeling on the arm.
“Even now it’s like, if I woke up and it was fine, do I even need it? That’s where I’m at. It doesn’t really matter.”