Mike Ngulube’s desperate search for his baby’s body

Mike Ngulube, Memory (his daughter) and his wife, Joyce Banda. Memory and Joyce died in the Marshalltown building fire on 31 August 2023. Photos supplied

Every night before he goes to sleep, 36-year-old Mike Ngulube looks at a picture of his late wife, Joyce Banda, and their daughter, Memory. Banda and Memory died a year ago in the fire in the Usindiso building in Marshalltown. Joyce has been laid to rest in Malawi, but Memory’s body is nowhere to be found.

She was 21 months old when she died.

On the night of 31 August 2023, Ngulube says, he and his family went to bed peacefully, only to be woken by screaming as smoke tore through their home. He sent his wife and baby out of the room and stayed behind to grab the family’s important documents.

On his way towards the entrance on the first floor where they lived, an electric switch exploded, and flames consumed him. He remembers nothing more until he woke up in pain in an ICU ward at Baragwanath Hospital with bandages wrapped all over his body. He was told that both his wife and daughter had died.

Ngulube stayed in hospital for two months.

Meanwhile his uncle, Victor Chirwa, and Joyce’s mother, Ella Manda, searched the hospitals where the Usindiso survivors had been taken, looking for the bodies of Joyce and Memory.

In mid-September they went to Diepkloof Mortuary. They were shown pictures of the bodies kept in the mortuary and were able to identify Memory’s body from a photograph. The baby had not been burned and she had most likely died as a result of smoke inhalation. However, the mortuary staff said they could not release the body without collecting DNA samples from family members.

Manda’s sample revealed that she was related to Memory, and when the family returned the next day the mortuary staff gave the family members a number that they could use to retrieve the body. But they refused to release Memory’s body immediately, because the mother’s body had not yet been found.

Manda and Chirwa kept searching in hospitals, hoping to find that in spite of everything, Joyce could be alive. But on 29 September, the Diepkloof mortuary phoned to tell them that Joyce’s body had been found. They went to the mortuary and identified her body from a photograph. She had also not been burned.

Finally, Joyce’s body was released to the family. But still not Memory’s.

The family was told that the baby’s DNA also matched that of another family and that her body had been given to them, says Chirwa. “When we asked how one DNA could connect two unrelated families, they had no answers. We are still shocked,” he says.

Manda and the other family members were left with no choice but to take Joyce’s body, alone, to Malawi for burial.

After the funeral, Manda returned to South Africa. When Ngulube got out of hospital in October last year, the two of them resumed the search for Memory’s body. Ngulube supplied his own DNA sample and went to and fro from the mortuary and the forensic services offices, but so far without success.

“My older granddaughter, who is Joyce’s firstborn, has been asking me when we will bring Memory, but I have been unable to give her answers,” said Manda.

Brigadier Brenda Muridili, Gauteng SAPS spokesperson, said the case was under investigation.

“Those allegations are still under investigation. Mr Mike Ngulube and his family recently met with the Gauteng Forensic Pathology Services and the SAPS Investigating Officer in relation to his case,’’ she said, adding that she is not at liberty to comment further on this case.

Nomzamo Zondo, the executive director at the Socio-Economic Rights Institute (SERI) said SERI and the Marshalltown Fire Justice Campaign had facilitated a meeting with the Gauteng Pathology Services last Friday.

“During the meeting, pathology services said they were going to need another DNA sample from Mike,” said Zondo.

Zondo said the process of identifying the bodies of people who died in the Marshalltown fire had been difficult. She said that at a meeting with police in January, she had found out that some people had taken DNA samples multiple times only to discover that bodies of their loved ones are not in the morgue. This raised concerns about the possibility that more than 76 people may have died in the fire and that some bodies were so badly burned that nothing had been retrieved, she said.

Ngulube can only hope that with a new DNA sample, the forensics services will be able to return Memory’s body to him at last.

“The fact that my baby may have been buried by total strangers breaks my heart,” he says.

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