LUFAFA – The world record for a person to stay under water is 24 minutes, but for a family in the northern Hhohho region, one man has supposedly been submerged for four years.
His family, at Lufafa quietly awaits his return as if he disappeared yesterday yet he vanished over four years ago. Lufafa is an area around Ntfonjeni Inkhundla in northern Hhohho.
The rondavel stands quietly at the edge of the homestead in Lufafa, without a door as per instruction. Beside it, a shallow pond has been dug into the earth, waiting. It has been waiting, like the man who built it, for four years now.
Steven Dlamini, a pastor and father of several children, built that structure on the instruction of traditional healers from Mozambique. He believes, with a conviction that has not wavered in over four years, that one day soon, his missing son Kholwa will emerge from that pond, cross into the door-less rondavel, and come home.
His family specifically built the pond, the size of a Jacuzzi on the instructions of an inyanga who told them that, from the river, Kholwa would reappear through it.
To many, it sounds like the language of grief. To Steven, it is simply faith that his son will return.
Kholwa Dlamini was 21 years old in November 2021, a bright, ambitious and, according to his father, academically gifted enough to have enrolled at university. He had chosen a different path, however, with his sights set on joining the Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS). Steven remembers being proud. He also remembers being relieved, because at the time, he did not have the money to fund a university education and the thought of his son joining the police service excited him.
On the day he disappeared, Kholwa had done something entirely ordinary but, for him it was unusual, because unlike his brothers, he was not accustomed to moving through the bush, having spent most of his days at school while growing up. He had walked with his brother towards the mountains on the border between Eswatini and South Africa, escorting him partway as his brother prepared to cross into the neighbouring country. Having seen his brother off, Kholwa turned back. His destination was Pigg’s Peak town, a journey he knew well from their home at Lufafa.
What happened next has been pieced together largely from the final phone calls Kholwa made before his phone went silent. As he made his way back through the thick mountain forest, a dense fog rolled in around him. He began to walk in circles. Disorientated and increasingly alarmed, he called his father for directions. “I am lost,” he said, through a poor signal on his phone.
*…
He is still alive under water - inyanga tells family
LUFAFA – It was through a network of contacts that Steven was eventually introduced to traditional healers – tinyanga from Mozambique.
What they told him was extraordinary. According to the tinyanga, Kholwa did not die but is alive, not in a room somewhere, but deep under water. The inyanga told the family he had not been harmed by another person. He had been taken by a water spirit, they said, pulled beneath the surface of a nearby river. He was alive, they insisted, undergoing initiation training beneath the water to become an inyanga himself.
Steven is a pastor. He has spent his adult life rooted in the Christian Faith. He acknowledges, without embarrassment, how the story sounds. Yet he says he had no choice but to listen when the tinyanga began to describe his son, his appearance, his personality, the precise details of his disappearance, with an accuracy he could not dismiss.
*…
Over E200 000 spent on tinyanga to find son
LUFAFA – Four years of searching, consulting and travelling have not come without a significant financial toll.
Steven, the father of the missing man, revealed that he has spent at least E200 000 on consultations with various tinyanga and that figure does not include the cost of constructing the rondavel and the pond. He has visited multiple traditional healers, not just one, and has even travelled to Mozambique in pursuit of answers.
Asked whether he regrets the expenditure, Steven did not hesitate. He said he would spend it again. He said his family also want answers about his missing son, adding that they do not at any time say their son is deceased, as there has been no proof of this. “If he is dead, where is his grave?” he asked.
*Full article available on Pressreader*
