ON THE OTHER SIDE: Nkomazi’s transnational families
By: The Endless Journey
Tags: Documentary, Africa, Migrants, Photojournalism, Disability

Living in a rudimentary shack with a dirt floor at the back of his brother’s yard, Shadrack Mkukuli, 58, still carries the physical and psychological scars of the civil war in Mozambique, which ended in 1992.

Mkukuli’s leg was amputated after he suffered a horrific injury in an attack on a train in 1984. After losing a number of family members in the war, it was the murder of his brother that prompted family members already living in the Nkomazi area in northeast Mpumalanga in South Africa to send a relative across the border and bring him to South Africa.

“I’m not feeling good. I don’t have an income. I can’t work, I’m suffering too much.”

In clear detail, Mkukuli described the day of an attack on a train by the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) which left him maimed.

“In 1984 I was working at Spoornet [the South African Transport Services] in Mozambique. That’s when I got injured. I was working on the train and Renamo planted bombs on the train. When it exploded, that’s when I got injured. After the bombs exploded, they attacked the train with guns.”

Mkukuli is a quiet man with a gentle smile. But when he starts talking about that day, he straightens himself in his chair as his smile fades and his eyes widen. “Many, many people died that day. But myself, I’m lucky, I just lost my leg,” he said. “So many people died in my face. They shot them in front of me.”

During the 15-year-long civil war, Mkukuli lost numerous family members including his father, grandmother and uncle. But it was the killing of his younger brother that had the biggest impact on him.

“I saw the attacks. I can’t forget it. My brother, while he was sleeping, they came into the house and shot him to death while he was sleeping,” Mkukuli said.

Mkukuli has used the same prosthetic leg for 31 years.

Only after he arrived in South Africa, in January 1989, was he able to get a prosthetic leg, having previously relied on crutches. He still uses the same prosthetic. It is old and cracked, but Mkukuli has been unable to get it replaced.

His legal status and the fact that he never applied for asylum on his arrival means he has been living on the periphery of society in Nkomazi, making it harder for him to access basic services such as healthcare. “I’m not feeling good. I don’t have an income. I can’t work, I’m suffering too much,” he said.

Shadrack Mkukuli inside his home.

Mkukuli’s case is not unique to this area in South Africa, where regional cross-border migration has been a feature for centuries. Bordered by Mozambique to the east and eSwatini to the south, Nkomazi comprises many cross-border communities.

In a paper commissioned by the Nelson Mandela Foundation in 2009, titled “The dynamics of social cohesion amidst transnational spaces”, Ken Mutuma writes that many Mozambican residents who remain in the area are former refugees who fled the civil war in Mozambique. Today, most of them are permanently settled and integrated in the community, speaking local languages such as siSwati and isiNdebele fluently.

“Some have accessed South African identity documents through government amnesties and exemptions in 1996 and 1999/2000, but many, due to procedural weaknesses in the implementation of the amnesties, remain without documentation, unable to access basic services.

“This history of past migration from neighbouring states seems to have been conveniently forgotten, despite the fact that many of them have developed family ties in South Africa that stretch back decades,” Mutuma wrote.