'We couldn’t see her face' - heartache as fire victims' families search for loved ones

The government mortuary is where the bodies of the more than 70 victims of the Marshalltown building fire had been moved.

More than 60 of the victims were burned beyond recognition.

According to authorities, at least 29 families have come forward to try and locate their relatives who may have been caught in the deadly inferno that engulfed the Usindiso Building in the early hours of Thursday morning.

A defeated Mary Kananji, who was looking for her sister Hawa Majawa, was one of the first relatives at the mortuary on Friday, but said it seemed the 23-year-old was not amongst the deceased that she was asked to identify.

“We couldn’t see her face, and we were looking everywhere. We came back here but police were chasing us [away] saying we can’t enter this house,” Kananji said as she gazed at the cordoned building.

Her head draped in a yellow hijab with her baby on her back, Kananji said she felt helpless.

She said all she could do was wait around on Albert Street with other families, as she believed her sister could still be trapped in the building.

READ: Joburg fire death toll rises to 76

“I think that maybe she’s burned there inside. By the time we were coming, the fire already covered everywhere. People failed to go upstairs because others closed the doors and others fainted. So many people are dead there.”

Kananji said she had been receiving calls from relatives in Malawi who urged her to at least find her sister’s remains, so they can give her a dignified funeral in accordance with Islamic burial rites.

“They called crying and saying we must find out if she is alive. If she isn’t, we must have the ceremony of a funeral. When we came back from the mortuary, they were calling us to ask if we could identify her. But we couldn’t, which means she burnt inside the house.”

Majawa has three children living in Malawi. 

Hibla Adam said he was at work in Mayfair when he learned about the deadly fire at the building where his wife, Samiya Jaba, had been living for just three weeks. 

Adam said his wife had moved to Marshalltown in search of a job and had been sharing a room with five others. 

Emergency officials described the partitioned rooms as an "informal settlement" with over 80 "shacks" in the basement.

"I'm here now and I am looking for my wife. I don't where to look but I am checking everywhere."

Adam said he had not been to any of the shelters housing displaced victims, nor had he been to the Diepkloof mortuary or any of the hospitals. 

‘I WANT TO GO FIND MY BABY’

A woman who identified herself as a sex worker from Zambia, living and working in Johannesburg CBD, said she wanted to go back inside the building to find her child.

Of the 76 fatalities, 12 were children, the youngest just over a year old.

Visibly inebriated, and with her eyes swollen and bloodshot from crying, the woman described a life of rampant crime and drug abuse within the hijacked building.

She refused to give details about her missing child.

“I want to go and check my baby. I am fighting very much because I want to go inside.

“To tell the truth even now, everyone is mourning but the brothers used to be thieves. They used to stab with knives.”

She said she believed the gruesome deaths were a curse against those who lived a life of crime.

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