"It is God’s will. Only He knows why this happened. Why am I alive and others have died?” This is how a Free State police reservist, seriously injured in Sunday’s Force 1 tornado, described his miraculous survival and that of his wife after they were lifted and hurled through the air.
Bongani Salemane, 28, and his partner, Maserame Mphukge, 21, were sliced by sheets of corrugated iron roofing as the storm of unexpected intensity ripped through the Lesotho border town on Sunday.
The couple had been inside their home in the Meqheleng informal settlement when the storm struck. An eight-year-old boy died and they and 40 other residents were injured.
Recounting their frightening experience, Salemane, who sustained head injuries which has left his speech impaired, described how the winds tore him from Mphukge.
“I tried holding her. I tried really hard, but I couldn’t. The winds were so strong. We tried to hide underneath our bed, but when the wind hit us everything vanished.
“I remember the rain and the hail and loud, loud noises as our house was destroyed,” he said.
At about 40m away from where their house had previously stood, Salemane realised he had been badly hurt.
With blood coming from his mouth, ears and a deep cut to his head, where a piece of metal fractured his skull and injured his brain, Salemane tried to get up to find Maserame.
Lying metres away, Maserame, who suffered serious injuries to her neck, was unable to move.
The couple were raced to Ficksburg’s nearby hospital before they, along with 12-year-old Kopana Thapeli, were taken to Bethlehem’s Dihjlabeng Regional Hospital.
Sitting in a wheelchair next to Salemane, who is confined to bed because of his injuries, Maserame said it had felt as though the world was ending.
“It just would not stop. We first thought the storm would miss us and that it was not so bad, but then the wind came. It got stronger and stronger. The house started shaking. We could hear people screaming and calling for help.
“It suddenly went dark and then the house and the bed just disappeared and the wind just sucked us off the ground.
“I tried to grab something but I couldn’t and then things started hitting us. I remember the pain and then waking up on the ground unable to move,” she said.
The storm, described by Free State government officials as one of the worst to strike the province, has left the couple with nothing.
“Everything that we ever owned has gone. Our ID books, our clothes, furniture, everything. The only things we have are the clothes that we were brought to hospital in.
“We do not know how we are going to survive. But I know it is God’s will. All I can do now is pray that I will be able to speak properly so that I can continue to help my community,” said Salemane. - Pretoria News