Vince de Villiers
Loved and lost: Sizwe Sibiya (10 September 1996 – 29 August 2022)
Some 20 years ago around Christmas time, a little boy named Sizwe, no more than hip high to an adult, roamed the streets of Volksrust, a rural town in the foothills of Majuba near the KZN border.
In shops and through the windows of houses, Sizwe saw boxes under trees. He only found out later in movies and the local supermarkets that there were presents under Christmas trees and that the boxes contained toys for children and gifts for adults.
We don’t know if he missed or desired those brightly wrapped boxes but we do know, through a letter he wrote in Scrolla.Africa’s Christmas edition last year, that Christmas time was his best time of the year.
Covid-19 was at its brutal worst during Christmas 2021 and Sizwe remembers in his letter that the pandemic also touched Volksrust, instilling fear and distrust among community members.
He also remembers that Christmas Day was always the best holiday.
“Because I never went to church, I didn’t even know Christmas celebrated the birth of Jesus,” he writes.
“We had to wake up very early because everybody in the family had a role to play in making the day the most special day of the year.”
It was the job of the boys to make sure the yard was spotlessly clean while the women cleaned the house and prepared a huge feast.
“When the chores were done all the kids would disappear into their homes for a quick bath,” he says.
“Then we would all come out wearing our new Christmas clothes – sometimes even a new outfit from head to toe, depending on what the family could afford. For most of us that was the only new clothes we would get for the year.”
And mostly, he writes, they enjoyed the food. First having lunch at home with friends and family, then moving next door, for Christmas cakes or Bakers Choice Assorted Biscuits. In the afternoon they would end up at somebody’s house, “possibly someone who didn’t have children”, who would give them dessert to complete the feast.
“We would eat some and save enough to take away,” he writes.
“As night fell, we would go home with sweets in our pockets and smiles on our faces to carry us through the following year.”
I only knew Sizwe as a voice on the phone and in conferences.
As an older person, I look to the youth to give me hope for the future and Sizwe was that guy.
Never jolly, never making wise cracks, never playing the fool, he seemed serious – intense even. Yet, his sense of humour came through in a little chuckle from time to time. And then there were the signs of his work ethic. Always available, always willing, always prepared.
And now, I’ll never hear that voice on the phone again.
His death shocks us more because he was that guy that … well … that guy who was so full of life and energy, who was not supposed to die.
But his spirit will remain with us. As the spirit of that little boy will roam the streets of Volksrust on Christmas Day hoping for another Choice Assorted biscuit, so his spirit will remain with us at Scrolla.Africa.
Man! How we will miss him.
“We are devastated”
Sizwe Sibiya was born in Vukuzakhe township in Volksrust, the son of Lucky Joel Sibiya and Sibongile Elizabeth Buthelezi. His father was a mechanic and he had six siblings.
At one point he wanted to be a soccer star. He loved bicycles. He bought himself a camera to shoot events like weddings and funerals making money to put himself through a course in media studies while he stayed with his aunt outside KwaMashu.
He was a brilliant rapper but he found “opportunities slim in this amapiano age”.
His first job was as a journalist at a community newspaper in Durban.
From there he joined Scrolla.Africa in 2019 as an intern. He became one of our first hires and worked his way up to be night editor in charge of production and the lead writer on popular culture.
Sizwe died on Sunday morning 28 August 2022 in a car accident at Newlands outside Durban.
Scrolla CEO Mungo Soggot wrote to staff: “It is impossible to grasp that such a young, sparkling, fastidious man, who had his life ahead of him, is now gone.”
Editor at Large Everson Luhanga expressed the feelings of those on the staff who knew Sizwe and loved him: “We are devastated by his passing.”
A recording of Sizwe’s song, Qhaphela Ngubani”, meaning “Guess who I am”, is available to listen to here:
