Usindiso: Witness recalls fall from fifth floor

Mdlalose admitted to starting the deadly fire that claimed over 70 lives in the hijacked Usindiso building in  Marshalltown, Johannesburg, claiming he was trying to conceal a murder he had committed that night.

The 31-year-old appeared in the High Court in Palm Ridge, where he faces a raft of charges including murder and attempted murder.

He sat in the dock wearing a worn-out black tracksuit set, looking expressionless as the witness testified. 

Speaking through a translator, Tholakele Zondo said she had been sleeping with her family when neighbours alerted her to the fire. 

“People were screaming in different languages that there is a fire. I couldn’t see the fire and there was no smoke [on the third floor].” 

With no way of reaching the main entrance on the bottom floor, Zondo recalled how she lost sight of her two teenage children and her husband as she tried to escape to the top of the building with her four-year-old daughter.

On the fourth floor, she met four Tanzanian males who tried to help her, but she slipped and fell one floor down from the fifth floor and became unconscious.

“At first, I couldn’t see that I was injured. They woke me, and I could hear my child crying. The men left and returned with a blanket, which they said they would help me reach the fight floor with. But I refused, but I feared she would fall again.” 

She said the men pleaded with her to try, but she still refused and saw them walking away, and she was left alone with her child. 

Zondo said she just prayed and hoped to survive.

Zondo, who struggled to hold back the tears as testified, says when help finally arrived, she and other survivors were met with the image of dozens of bodies lying covered on the street.

She said to this day, she still can’t fathom that most of her neighbours died such a gruesome death. 

After Zodwa concluded her testimony, the matter was postponed to Thursday. 

ALSO READ: