It was a hot January morning in Pretoria. Sunny, but the bus was heavy with darkness.
A passenger in the bus treading a tightrope between love and war, sat a seat away from Phindile Mahlangu. She was on her way to work in KwaMhlanga, a town in Mpumalanga.
When the bus reached Allemansdrift, near Vaalbank, the demon of wrath, Aeshma, erupted and was unhinged.
A few other passengers were present. They were horrified. What they saw next was godless.
With a fiery aura, a STRANGER, who was ONCE A LOVER, rose from his seat. He was the one a seat away from 27-year-old Phindile all this time.
Titas Thabo once claimed he loved Phindile.
But on that January 6th in 2020, in a despicable fashion, he poached her.
Sat so nearby, yet so far away. He stood and approached her.
He could not accept that their relationship had ended.
He took matters into his own hands.
Hands that he used to spark up the darkness heavy in the bus.
Hands that he used to slap her. It was that slap that triggered a burning desire to light up his knife with her blood.
Once his knife was bright enough, he ordered the driver to stop.
But he didn't stop when she was begging for her life.
I guess the one with the final say is he who wields a bloody knife.
Phindile pleaded. She was bleeding. She was dying at the hands of her former lover. Passengers took her to a nearby house for help, where she was taken to the nearest clinic and succumbed to her injuries.
Thabo once claimed he loved Phindile.
Her unavailability to him triggered a burning desire to light up his knife with her blood.
This is what happens when your demons outnumber your angels. Love turns to hate.
Passion turns to rage. We have become vile mercenaries in a femicide generation, with hashtags as shields and swords.
Aeshma, the demon of wrath, is like night. He never misses a day.
Too many lovers have felt both passion and rage from the hands of the other lover.
Too many don’t live to tell their stories. These get lost in communication from beneath a grave.
What has become of our hands?
We can use them to build castles in the sky. To paint and whittle the beauty of life.
What of our hearts if our predominant beating is with our hands?
How do I tell my daughter that she could be killed by a man, any man.
Even one who has claimed to love her?
How do we curb the burning in our sons? In us?
If my daughter never gets to read this, tell her I am a combination of murderous and kind.
But also tell her that murderers can be kind.
Tell her I am volcano, cousin to rainbow. I am inferno, brother to butterflies.
I am darkness. No relation to black. I am harness, the line between life and death.
My blood stream harbours vultures and crows.
I am land, nothing grows on my skin. Tell her, her dad's natural habitat is a bin.
When love mimics war, one ends up in a jail cell and the other a grave.