A 33 old Zimbabwean hairdresser, Wadzanai Madiri, is languishing in Johannesburg, seriously injured from gunshot wounds after being shot while working as a casual worker at a nightclub in Nelspriut. Her employer refuses to compensate her or pay for her treatment, four months later.
Wadzanayi a hairdresser by profession, was told by a friend that there was a nightclub looking for casual employees, and seeing it as a way to make extra cash took up the opportunity, in August last year.
“She was hired as a casual worker to put wrist bands on patrons at the club entrance. As she was doing her job, a guy who was having a fight with his girlfriend chased his girlfriend to the nightclub tried to shoot at her, instead shot Wadzanayi on the forehead and then fired a second bullet, which then hit his girlfriend,” narrates Wadzanayi’s sister Ida.
According to Ida, the nightclub owners (name provided) came out to get their cash box and immediately closed the nightclub, leaving her sister lying in a pool of blood outside.
“The owners of the club didn’t even bother to take her to the hospital, and a friend who is from Zimbabwe and one of the nightclub revelers are the ones who carried her in their arms and took her to the hospital,” says Ida.
“What really hurts me before we get into other issues is that they didn’t even bother to take her to the hospital, which is a stone throw away from the nightclub, but were only concerned about their cash box, yet the three owners all have cars,” says a visibly distraught Ida.
The man who shot Wadzanayi is facing two charges of attempted murder, while the fate of his girlfriend is unknown but for Wadzanayi, a single mother of three, life has taken a turn for the worst.
After spending three weeks, unconscious, barely able to talk, Wadzanayi was discharged after spending four weeks at a government run hospital.
Doctors are surprised that she survived and say there is a fifty, fifty chance that she could lose her sanity.
But in the meantime her family are struggling to take care of her three children as Wadzanayi , a single mother is too sick to work and take of her children.
“When she tries to plait someone’s hair, she gets so tired that she has to rest for the next two days,” says Ida adding tha four months later, neither have the nightclub owners visited he in hospital, let alone contribute a cent towards Wadzanayi’s upkeep.
“They only sent a friend of Wadzanayi’s, whose also a Zimbabwean with R160, which was supposed to be her salary for the night and nothing else. I have tried to contact them(employers) and though they take my calls, they keep promising that they will get back to me but they don’t. We are now contemplating on taking Wadzanayi back to Zimbabwe as we have run out of ideas on how to fend for. We as her family are struggling to eke a living and one of her kids is supposed to start school this year,” adds Ida with tears rolling down her eyese
Migrant Workers Union of South Africa (MIWUSA) general secretary Mandla Masuku, who is now trying to help the family get legal help, says, cases like Wadzanayi’s are common as most employers donot compensate workers injured while working for them.
“What makes this worse is that when a worker is a non SA citizen, workers even take advantage of this, but it is illegal,” says Masuku. – Zimsinza
