Usindiso Inquiry: Witness recalls losing teenage daughter in the blaze
The
Usindiso Commission of Inquiry continued with the testimony of a survivor who
lost her teenage daughter in the Marshalltown fire.
More than 70 people were killed when a fire raged through the hijacked Usindiso building in the Johannesburg CBD in the early hours of 31 August 2023.
Wendy Mhlebi, from the Eastern Cape, says she began living in the five-storey building in 2018 when it was still a shelter for women and children.
She had arrived in Johannesburg in 2011, with the hope of growing her singing career.
Mhlebi told the commission things took a turn for the worst when men began living with them.
“We lived in fear because there were people always fighting outside. We were scared to go out because we could get robbed.
“Even inside the building, there were three people who had been killed inside the building.”
Mhlebi confirmed earlier statement by emergency officials, that there were makeshift structures erected inside the overcrowded property.
She repeated reports by previous witnesses that their electricity was reconnected by a municipal official after it was disconnected in 2019 for non-payment of a debt that went into the millions.
“We attended a meeting, and we were told that there was a person who could switch the lights back on if we raised a certain amount of money. I assume he was paid because the electricity was back after two weeks.”
READ MORE: Marshalltown fire survivor tells inquiry 'police took bribes'
On the night of the fire, Mhlebi says was sleeping with her two children and partner when she heard screams outside the window of her bedroom on the fourth floor.
She described how her boyfriend wrapped their two-year-old toddler in a blanket before jumping out of the window.
Mhlebi followed next and then waited to catch her 16-year-old daughter Melita, but the reluctant teenager turned back and tried to run through the door.
“I looked up and realized Melita was running towards the door. There was nothing I could do because I had already jumped.”
Mhlebi says she remembers nothing more as she woke up in the hospital two days later – which is when she also learned that Melita died in the fire.
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