She was confused about where her life was going.

Thandile was a woman with a lot of money and dreams but for some reason she struggled to achieve her dreams. She owned her own shebeen that she had inherited from her grandmother. Her grandmother had opened the shebeen in 1980 in the middle of nowhere, in an obscure rural village in the eastern cape.

Thandile had always loved this grandmother and didn’t want to disappoint her. But Thandile could not make any profit from the shebeen and only received back the same money she paid for the alcohol. Thandile decided that it was time to visit the shebeen to find out why it was not making any money.

On 19th of November 2009, Thandile was travelling from cape town up to the eastern cape with her best friend and trusted advisor, Nomsa. The car that she was travelling in got into a head-on collision with a bus and rolled down a steep hill. Thandile survived, god had saved her, but her best friend Nomsa had died.

When she arrived in the eastern cape, people had heard about the accident and were confused because she was still alive. They did not understand how Nomsa had died and Thandile had somehow survived. The driver of the bus brought a charge against Thandile and claimed that she had caused the accident by not stopping properly at a four-way stop. People on the bus had died and Thandile was blamed. The community people went to her and they did what we call a toi-toi, they went to her to find out about what she has gone through and also about the accident.

After a while, Thandile went to her traditional healer and she took some medicine so that she could win the case which she was arrested for. However, the medicine only lasted for a short time because she used it every day to deal with her feelings about the accident. The medicine soon finished before Thandile was due in court.

Something in the court case went wrong and Thandile was found guilty. Thandile blamed her traditional healer that he didn’t give her enough medicine. He said that she didn’t give him enough money so he couldn’t give her all of the medicine she needed. So Thandile went to jail and had to leave the shebeen to a friend to look after.