When we arrive at the Komape house in Chebeng, Limpopo, Mama Rosina immediately chastises me for being late for the interview. “Next time you’re late, nobody will be here,” she says sternly. It is only when I compliment her outfit that she cracks a smile.

“This old thing?” she says, holding her floral dress out. This may be the first time I have ever seen Mama Rosina smile. She settles on the couch and cocks her head, giving me her full attention. When we start chatting about her childhood, she has a faraway look before she begins. It as though she has travelled back in time to narrate the story of her life.

“The last time any of us had actual freedom was when Mandela was president,” she says.

The horrors of the apartheid regime are still etched in Komape’s mind.

“Our children don’t know anything about police brutality. In my time, you would get pulled off the street into a police van and told that you would explain yourself at the police station. They didn’t need a reason to arrest you. There were police and army men roaming the streets 24/7, and people would get chased down by police dogs,” she recalls.

Back then, they called it “black power”, she says, referring to the political upheaval and the struggle against apartheid in the late 1970s. Mama Rosina recalls groups of students always meeting and talking about “black power”. Growing up with a staunch Christian grandmother (after her parents got divorced) meant that most of her free time was spent in the church, where the pastor discouraged the children from getting involved in politics. Which suited her just fine.

“I was never one for politics or anything of that sort, all I wanted was to get married and be a homemaker,” she smiles.

Growing up, Mama Rosina spent her time at school, playing netball, singing in the church choir, doing house chores, and attending girl scouts. While she’s speaking, she suddenly bursts into song. When she is done, she turns to me with a grin and explains, “We used to sing those songs when we were scouts.”

Rosina Mankone Komape was born and raised in the small village of Utjane, in Ga-Mashashane, 20km outside of Polokwane. Very little has changed in Utjane, which is just 20 minutes away from her current home in Moletji, Chebeng, where she has lived with her husband, James Komape, for more than 30 years. Rosina met James when she was 16.

“He was so handsome, so tall, and very polite,” she says. James was the oldest in his family and so was Rosina. It was these similarities that convinced Rosina’s grandmother that theirs was a match made in heaven. After more than 30 years of “blissful” marriage, Mama Rosina says, “Not once has he raised his voice at me, and I know nothing of being beaten. He is a good man.”

When Mama Rosina’s parents got divorced, it was decided that she would live with her grandmother. They had a special relationship. Her grandmother became her mother and taught her everything a young woman needed to know growing up.

Her face lights up as she speaks about her grandmother: “And she still visits me in my dreams.”

Rosina Komape: Smiling even though her heart is breaking. Photo: Thom Pierce

“My grandmother adored me, and I loved being with her. She taught me everything, she had always wanted me to stay in school, but when my parents split up that wasn’t possible, so I dropped out in Grade 5. I was disappointed, but I told myself that I would make sure that my children get an education.”

A young Mama Rosina took the setback in her stride and went into the job market. Unsurprisingly for the born homemaker, her first job was being a caregiver at a school. Here she spent her days looking after the children, feeding them and putting them to sleep.

“You know, when I was there, I never let a single child go to the toilet on their own, I would go with them, one by one, hand them some tissue paper and then wash their hands. And I did that even though they had flushing toilets.”

After this, she pauses and then asks, “How can you send a child to the toilet alone?”

A rhetorical question. But far from random.

After that, Rosina was employed as a domestic worker, where again she thrived.

“I didn’t take up that job because I was struggling — my husband was employed — I did it because I enjoyed it, I loved it.”

A quick glance at the polished living-room floor is confirmation enough.

Despite growing up under apartheid in rural Limpopo, Rosina says that life was a lot simpler back then. “You didn’t need much, just food to eat and a nice dress to go to church in.”

Her dreams for the future, were just as simple: to get married to a good man, and to have children.

“And as God is good, I even gave birth to twins,” she smiles.

There is a single-family portrait hanging in the Komapes’ living room. In it, Rosina and her husband James are smiling, surrounded by their five children… there should be six.

Her son, Michael Komape, died in 2014, after he fell into a pit toilet and drowned in human faeces. He was just five years old and had been at Mahlodumela Lower Primary School for only four days before the tragic incident.

The last image of her son that Mama Rosina saw was that of his tiny hand sticking out of the pit toilet.

“In my dreams, his hand is always beckoning towards me, I will never forget that day,” she says as her voice cracks and tears well up in her eyes.

Overnight, Mama Rosina’s dreams of a simple life were shattered. Michael’s sudden death devastated the family. The family home, which had been filled with the sounds of children bickering and playing, was now quiet. Everybody was hurting, they were angry, they stopped speaking to each other. The only constant sounds were Mama Rosina’s muffled cries and her son Moses shouting out loud from nightmares.

“He would shout, ‘Run Michael, watch out, you are going to fall into the toilet’,” recalls Mama Rosina.

The night before Michael died, the family had dinner together as usual. They watched TV and the children left the living room to go to bed. Nothing could have prepared the family for the events of the next day, not even the dreams that Mama Rosina and her eldest daughter Lydia had had a few days before.

In Mama Rosina’s dream, she heard a voice telling her that the child had been hit by his uncle’s taxi and he had died. Lydia dreamed that the family had walked towards a big hole and then they all walked away from it. In retrospect, the dreams were frighteningly ominous.

“But we never expected that it would be Michael’s death,” she says softly.

Mama Rosina is one of 17 million people in SA who receive a state grant. The family fell on hard times when James became ill and was unable to work. When Michael died the family had no means to bury him.

“The first undertaker I went to took my SASSA card. They said they would hold on to it and take the money from that.” An illegal practice that many poor South Africans get caught up in when they struggle to make ends meet.

“There was nothing I could do.”

The community rallied together and assisted the Komapes with the arrangements of Michael’s funeral.

“People made donations to us. We got a call from another undertaker, and they told me that they would take care of everything for us.”

After such an outpouring of love and support, Mama Rosina was taken aback when the very same community suddenly turned on her when the court proceedings started.

“I don’t know what it was — maybe that they all thought we were going to get rich from the case.”

Everything changed. The community she had once lived harmoniously with, now ostracised her.

“They would whisper about me and stare at me. Everywhere I went, I would hear them say, ‘That’s her, the woman whose child died in the toilet.’ I couldn’t even go to the clinic any more. I couldn’t watch the news, and I didn’t dare look at a newspaper.”

It was a difficult time. Mama Rosina worried endlessly that the whispers would eventually reach her youngest child, Johanna, who was three months old when Michael died.

“We haven’t told her what happened. She knows she had a brother that passed on, but that’s all. We can’t burden her with this now, she’s too young to understand and I know she’ll have questions that I won’t have answers to.”

The only saving grace, she says, is that all of the children who were in Michael’s year have now left the school. For Johanna, it is as if the tragedy never happened. She bears a strong resemblance to her late brother. She has the same big eyes, and dressed in Michael’s uniform it is hard to tell the two apart at first glance.

Johanna, who is now five years old, goes to the primary school where her brother died.

“I didn’t have a choice, I can’t afford to send her anywhere else.” Frustration flashes across Mama Rosina’s face and finally settles as a frown.

“When she grows up and can understand things better, I will explain to her.”

A kilometre away from the family home, Michael’s tiny grave stands between those of other family members. If the size of his grave is not jarring enough, his youthful image etched on the tombstone is a painful reminder of his untimely death.

“His eyes. Every time I went to that cemetery his eyes would follow me, whichever way I was headed his eyes were always locked on mine. It is better now, but for a long time I struggled to attend other funerals because the minute I walked past his grave, I would burst into tears.”

The grief was unbearable. The entire family struggled and it nearly killed Mama Rosina.

“It hurt so bad,” she says wiping a single tear from her face. “It was so bad, that one evening I thought of throwing myself off the seventh floor of a hotel in Cape Town.”

When Michael died, the family became the centre of attention. The hype took its toll on a family that had lived a very private life. What was even more frustrating was the way in which the wheels of justice moved. Steadily, but unbearably slowly.

The matter went to court only in 2017. Four long years after Michael had died. When family members gave evidence, after everything they had been through, they were treated as though they were the ones who had committed a crime. The state counsel accused the family of having contrived their grief.

The lawyer asked Mama Rosina whether they had bought the case forward to “get rich from her son’s death”.

Through tears, she defiantly choked back, “If you put a pile of money and my son in front of me, I will take my son and go.”

That single response was a defining moment. Rosina Komape was a mother. And that was the be-all and end-all. Everything that she ever did was for her children.

Her remaining children are the reason she did not let the grief consume her.

“I had to think about these kids. They lost their brother and I saw what it did to them. What would happen to them if they also lost their mother?”

A google image search will bring up at least 10 photographs of a sullen and grief-stricken Rosina Komape. For so long, that has been the story: she is the mother of a little boy who died in a pit toilet. Grief-stricken and eternally bruised.

But that is just one part of her story and her journey. Her courage and grace refuse to allow her son’s death to hold her hostage. Between the frowns and tears, slowly more smiles are starting to emerge. MC