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Religion

Albert Thabede’s Life of Faith

April 1, 2020 By Ainsley Ash

By Ainsley Ash

Many South Africans tell stories that have a marker: before and after democracy.

Albert Thabede remembers the earlier time well.

“Things were very, very bad,” he says, when he could not leave his house without his dompas.

But Thabede prefers a different before-and-after story: before and after a Monday morning in 1986.

“I was going to work. The man was preaching on a train. And then something [started] happening to me,” Thabede says slowly, staring into the distance that is the conglomerate of palm trees and pink houses and slumping clothes lines and vocal white taxis. He is sitting in a rusted folding chair on the back porch, and I am sitting beside him in a dilapidated seat covered with a piece of grey carpet.

Albert Thabede locks the door while leaving for church. (Ainsley Ash)

“He was preaching … Jesus. Then, my eyes were red. I was crying. I didn’t know what was happening to me,” he says matter-of-factly, with a crooked bright white smile on his face.

            His eyes are black, rimmed with a faint blue colour. Possibly from old age. He is 73 after all. Today he is wearing a grey-blue shirt with denim pants to match. He no longer has girlfriends or drinks Zulu beer, he says, unlike the men in his culture who do not know Jesus.

            I try to imagine a younger man with wholly black eyes overcome with emotion on the train to work. I struggle to remove the deep wrinkles lining his smile, and the white hair dotting his beard. [[lovely image]]

            Every Sunday morning and every Wednesday night, Thabede can be found in only one place: his church in Cato Manor. It’s where he finds his friends, his family, and his god. The congregation sings hymns half in Zulu and half in English. Baba confesses that he does not know all of the English words.

“Abancane kuYe bangabakhe… Babuthakathaka kepha Unamandla… Yes, Jesus loves me,” Thabede hums, and I hum along.

“That’s my favorite song,” he informs me. I agree. It is a lovely song.

The view from Albert Thabede’s back porch. (Ainsley Ash).

Even though Thabede is aging and his knees give him fits, he does not fear death, he says. He has done what he felt he was supposed to do: get a job, get a wife, and find his god. He does not seek wisdom or luck from prophets or ancestors or “grannies”.

“They say you get your job, because your grannies gave it to you. I don’t believe that now… I only believe in god,” he states with the wisdom of an older man with kind, blue-rimmed eyes.

LIFE

Cape Town mortuaries cut waiting times for Muslims

November 21, 2017 By Admin

By Olivia Decelles

Waiting periods for the release of Muslim bodies at Cape Town mortuaries have been cut by new measures put in place after complaints by the Muslim Judicial Council last month.

Council representatives were told at a meeting with the provincial health department on Tuesday that the allocation of more resources to the mortuaries had resulted in a halving of the waiting time.

The department previously undertook to release bodies between six and seven days after admission to mortuaries, but the judicial council had asked that the time be shortened for Muslims, to allow quicker burial as required by Muslim rites.

The new measures have reduced to an average of 3.5 days the time from admission to the release of bodies, said Western Cape MEC for health Nomafrench Mbombo.

The health department said the province had employed extra forensic pathology assistants and was appointing additional forensic pathologists and medical registrars to mortuaries.

This article was first published on TimesLive

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