Mysterious fires torment Kanye family
Sharon Mathala | Tuesday September 20, 2022 06:00
For 21 years now, the family has been living in fear. Fear of the unknown. When The Monitor news team visited their home on Saturday heaps of clothes stacked outside greeted the crew.
The family has decided to switch off all electrical plugs. They explain that the fires just come out of nowhere. "We decided to at least keep our clothes outside during the day so that one of us could put out the fire when it starts.
We also switch off all electrical plugs because we are afraid that when and if the fire starts next to a live plug it could catch a spark and burn down the whole house,” 65-year-old Orebotswe Otlogetswe says. Orebotswe is a grandmother living in distress.
She has watched how over the years her children and now grandchildren have had to live in shame, in fear of the mysterious fires and the curse that continue to torment her family. But how did it all start? Orebotswe tells The Monitor that she had been living peacefully with her now-deceased husband and children when one day back in 2001, her firstborn girl-child went missing.
She tells us they frantically searched for her around the village but she was nowhere to be found. “We were all shocked because she was not one to leave without informing anyone. We reported the matter to the police. Later that day someone informed us that they had spotted her. We went to look for her and when we found her she told us she had been kidnapped in the early morning by one of our relatives,” she narrates. The matter was taken back to the police who then closed the missing person case.
The accused, however, did not take the matter lightly and according to Orebotswe, she told them she was coming for them. “She told us in the presence of the police that we had embarrassed her by accusing her of kidnapping and that she is coming for my child. Since then the strangest things have been happening. That is when the fires started. At first, I thought it was one of my children playing recklessly until it happened when no one was in the room.” She continues: “In the beginning, the fires were specifically targeted at my daughter. She would have been sitting in a chair and immediately she stands up, the chair would burn down."
Back in 2001, the fires would torment the family for the next three years. “We then decided that maybe my daughter moves out to live with my grandmother on the other side of the village. She had to come back because the fires had almost destroyed all my grandmother's belongings. I had to take her back here because she is my daughter after all,” she adds.
According to the family at the end of 2004, after their story was aired on national television a good Samaritan visited them. He cleansed their family home and performed rituals on her daughter.
The family’s misery seemed to have come to an end, until last year May when the fires started again and they have not stopped since then. “The gentleman who helped us back in 2004 has passed on. Since last year we have called for help from churches but it only gets worse.
These fires have destroyed all I had accumulated for myself; my furniture.
My house is in shambles but all that doesn’t really matter. Those are just material things. What bothers me the most is that now the fires start at odd hours of the morning and I am afraid they will soon kill one of us,” the distressed grandmother says. Orebotswe further pleaded, “I don’t know what I could have possibly done to deserve this life of torment. How does one live like this? Look at the few clothes that haven’t been burnt. I keep them outside.” Adding to his mother’s woes and cries was Bonny Otlogetswe.
Her son tells The Monitor crew he remembers how back during his school-going days he could not keep a school uniform and was forced to sometimes go to school in plain clothes because the fires would continuously destroy his uniform. “Our childhood was traumatic. Now our children are experiencing the same. This week the fires got so intense that I had to ask for emergency leave at work and come back home to be with my family,” he added. The son further said that their family curse has burdened them so much but still has belief there is someone out there who can assist them.