For Nosipho Khosi-Dabane, Christmas 2025 is a season marked not by celebration, but by the heavy silence of loss and the ache of unanswered questions. Six months after catastrophic floods swept through Mthatha in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, she remains suspended between grief and hope, clinging to the possibility that the remains of her missing son, Lusanele, might one day be found.
On June 10, 2025, disaster struck with little warning. Torrential rains unleashed a wall of water that tore through communities, destroying homes, uprooting families, and claiming more than 100 lives. According to Daily Dispatch, the floods killed at least 104 people in the region, leaving thousands homeless and entire neighborhoods in ruins. For Khosi-Dabane, the devastation was deeply personal: her husband, Calvin Dabane, 44, her son Iminathi, 15, and her niece Someleze Khosi, 12, were among the dead. Her youngest child, Lusanele, 13, vanished in the chaos and has not been found since.
“The pain remains unbearable. I cannot have closure while my child is still missing,” Khosi-Dabane told Daily Dispatch. Her words cut to the heart of a parent’s worst nightmare—enduring the loss of nearly an entire family, with no answers and no final goodbye for her youngest. She has lost hope of finding Lusanele alive, but her only wish now is to recover his remains. “It is only my child who is still missing. Why me? I hope God will soon make us find his bones,” she said. A grave has already been prepared for Lusanele at the family burial site in Tabase, between the graves of his father and brother. “He has a space waiting for him,” she said quietly.
The trauma of that June morning is still vivid. Khosi-Dabane recalls being woken by her children, the house already filling with water as dawn broke. “We were woken up by the children saying there was water in the house,” she recounted to TimesLIVE. “It was early morning, time to get ready for school. I told them to put on clothes so we could look for shelter.” But the water was everywhere. As the family tried to escape, part of the house collapsed with a crash. “I heard them shout ‘Yhooo’ … and then I was swept away.”
She survived by swimming through the floodwaters, eventually managing to cling to a tree for hours, her arm fractured and her body battered. “I kept swimming until I hit a tree and held on, but the water was too strong. It pushed me away and fractured my arm. I fell into a whirlpool, water spinning in one place. I just kept praying, saying: ‘Not today, God.’” Eventually, she found her way to safety, but her world had been irrevocably changed.
When she returned to what remained of her home, there was nothing left. The three-roomed house she and her husband had built in 2015 and moved into in 2017 was gone, along with their livestock—eight pigs, four geese, 56 chickens—their vegetable crops, and her vehicle. “We were some sort of emerging farmers, and that was supplementing our income and livelihood. Now, I have nothing,” she told Daily Dispatch. The loss was not just emotional but material, stripping away her family’s means of survival.
Over the following days, the grim task of searching for loved ones began. Her niece, Someleze, was found at the mortuary, still in her school uniform. A week later, her 12-year-old son was discovered buried under zinc sheets and mud by community members searching for their own. Her husband’s body was recovered the following day. Lusanele, however, remains missing. “I strongly believe that if the search continues in that area, we will find my other son,” she told TimesLIVE. The uncertainty, she says, is suffocating. “Only if I can find the bones of Lusanele can I hope to have closure.”
Six months on, the festive season has only intensified Khosi-Dabane’s pain. “Seeing mothers shopping with their loved ones, children trying on new clothes, and families stocking up on groceries, it is like a knife to my heart,” she said. The traditions that once defined Christmas—slaughtering a pig, family feasts, trips to visit in-laws and the beaches of Port St Johns—are now painful reminders of what has been lost. “This year, I will cook alone,” she said. “Watching families prepare for Christmas is a stark reminder of my own loss.”
She now rents a single room in Mthatha and stays with her younger sister, who is also mourning the loss of her daughter in the floods. The shared support is a small comfort, but the sense of loss is overwhelming. “The last-minute rush of parents buying school uniforms and stationery will only amplify my sorrow, thinking of Lusanele, Iminathi and Someleze, who, if alive, I could be buying them school supplies. The pain is still raw, and the emptiness in me is suffocating,” she told Daily Dispatch.
As a security officer at Walter Sisulu University, Khosi-Dabane finds some structure in her work, but little solace. She has been receiving counseling since the disaster, but says the emotional wounds are slow to heal. “I still struggle with nightmares and anxiety attacks, but I am trying to stay strong.” Her resilience is evident, even as she admits, “I try to be strong. It’s not easy. I have to be determined.”
After the floods, the Eastern Cape government announced the allocation of 672 temporary residential units for displaced families, and Khosi-Dabane was moved into one at Mayden Farm in September. But the change has been bittersweet. “I get too emotional seeing my son’s peers playing outside. It feels like I might see him,” she told TimesLIVE. “There’s also no electricity.” The government also pledged R2,700 relocation vouchers per affected household, but Khosi-Dabane says she never received hers. “The premier said a lot, but it ended there. It was just empty promises ... We received food parcels but I don’t know what happened to the vouchers.”
This Christmas, instead of celebration, Khosi-Dabane will seek comfort in Barkly East, hoping to ease the burden on her mother. “I don’t want my mother to feel like her grandchildren are no more,” she said. Despite everything, she holds on to a sliver of hope: “I still believe that one day I will bury my son properly. Until then I am just surviving.”
For Khosi-Dabane, and for so many others who lost loved ones in the Mthatha floods, the journey toward healing is long and uncertain. The scars left by that night in June are deep, and the search for closure continues—one day, one memory, and one hope at a time.
