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The City of Johannesburg let her down — remembering Sukoluhle Moyo

The City of Johannesburg let her down — remembering Sukoluhle Moyo
Sukoluhle Moyo on 8 Jan 2024 — unwavering in faith, radiant in spirit. (Photo: Charmaine Moyo.)
Nigel Branken
By Nigel Branken
27 Mar 2025
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Sukoluhle Moyo, who was blind, taught us how to see. She taught us to see injustice. To see one another. To see what really matters. Justice is not just about laws – it’s about whether a grieving mother can bury her child with dignity.

The City of Johannesburg has lost one of its heroes. Although not many will recognise her name – some may not even know she existed – Sukoluhle Moyo was known. Known by the poor, the marginalised, the undocumented, the blind, the overlooked. She was known by those she fought for and fought alongside. Perhaps she was one of the most marginalised people in Johannesburg… but she never let that define her.

Sukoluhle was no stranger to suffering.

She told us her story – how her first baby was kidnapped when he was just two weeks old. She was standing outside her block of flats when a woman, who had previously befriended her at the hospital, came up to her and took the baby from her arms. Just like that – gone. She reported it to the police, but the child was never found. It was the kind of tragedy most people never recover from.

Her second child, Tamary, is now 18. Her third, Charmaine, is 15. In 2011, she gave birth to a baby girl, Lynne, whose story I’ll return to. And after that, she had one more child, a baby she hoped would be the beginning of a new season of joy. I remember the happiness in her voice as she anticipated that birth. But when the contractions started, she went to the fire station in the city centre for help. They refused to call an ambulance. It was 2am and emergency services said they wouldn’t come out to that area.

She waited for four hours. Eventually, she made it to hospital, but it was too late. The baby’s cord had been wrapped around its neck. The child lived for only a day or two.

Nobody should have to endure this much suffering. And yet – Sukoluhle never stopped fighting.

Sukoluhle Moyo addresses a city official, 27 Feb 2015. (Photo: Nigel Branken)


Constitutional Court judgment


I met her more than a decade ago under harrowing circumstances. Her children had been removed by the state while she was living in Pretoria. She was blind, a Zimbabwean national, and struggling with poverty. But she was also a deeply committed mother. Social workers claimed she lacked the capacity to care for her children – not because of any evidence of harm or neglect, but because of her disability, her foreign nationality and her poverty.

We fought together to have her children returned. That journey led to a landmark 2012 Constitutional Court of South Africa case: C and Others v Department of Health and Social Development, Gauteng and Others ([2012] ZACC 1). Sukoluhle is the anonymous “M” in that judgment – the mother whose pain reshaped South African law.

The court found that sections 151 and 152 of the Children’s Act unjustifiably infringed upon children’s rights by allowing for their removal from parental care without prompt judicial oversight.

Specifically, the judgment emphasised that removals without immediate court review could lead to violations of children’s rights to family care or parental care under Section 28(1)(b) of the Constitution. As a result, the court mandated that all removals under these sections be automatically and promptly reviewed by the Children’s Court to ensure the protection of children’s best interests.

Thanks to her courage, the Act was amended to require that any removal of a child from their home must be promptly reviewed by a court, ensuring that such interventions are justified and that children’s rights are upheld. Her case did not just bring her children home; it changed the law of the land.

But Sukoluhle’s journey with injustice was far from over.

Baby Lynne

I remember when baby Lynne – her fourth child – got sick. She had pneumonia. Sukoluhle took her to the local clinic, but was turned away because she was a foreigner.

Her blind friends, who begged for a living, raised money to see a private doctor. The doctor said Lynne urgently needed to be admitted to the hospital. Sukoluhle went back to the clinic with the doctor’s note and pleaded for help. But she was told: if you could afford a private doctor, you can afford a private hospital. They sent her away – with paracetamol.

The next day, she was meant to visit us for lunch. As we prepared food for her and little Lynne, she phoned us. Her voice was trembling. Lynne had died.

I gathered two friends – Frank Menezes, the soft-hearted owner of Metalcross in the Bryanston area, and Adrian Kleyn, who at the time worked as a manager at a fruit and vegetables distribution centre – and the three of us, three middle-class men, made our way to her home: a hijacked warehouse above the SupaQuick Tyre Shop in Johannesburg’s inner city.

That building was one of many vertical urban slums in Johannesburg’s inner city – places that represent some of the most dehumanising conditions I’ve seen anywhere in the world.

I’ve visited informal settlements in several countries, but there is something especially horrific about these hijacked buildings where everything is confined indoors.

In this particular building, hundreds of tiny rooms – each only about 2.5 x 2.5 metres – had been crudely constructed using poor-quality drywall partitions. There were no ceilings. The walls stopped just above two meters, leaving gaping spaces open to the building’s echoing interior. Sounds carried, heat swelled, privacy didn’t exist.

The building had only a few shared toilets for hundreds of residents. Taps leaked constantly, water pooled on floors and the place was infested with rats. These conditions weren’t just bleak – they were soul-crushing.

Last rites


It was into this environment that we stepped that day. And in one of those airless rooms, we found Sukoluhle on the floor, weeping, with baby Lynne’s lifeless body beside her.

I remember how helpless we felt. The police wouldn’t assist because the death was not suspicious. We phoned everyone we could. Eventually, Bishop Paul Verryn – who was in the US at the time – told us to call an ambulance to declare the child dead and gave us the number of an undertaker. After hours, arrangements were made. And it was Frank – our kind, quiet friend – who lifted that baby’s body and carried her to the hearse.

sukoluhle baby coffin Baby coffin – R2,300. Sukoluhle held it up to city officials as a quiet act of protest. I don’t think any mother should ever have to buy a coffin for her baby. And yet, she did — with courage, with dignity, and with unimaginable grief. (Invoice: Supplied)



We contacted Bishop Paul again, who agreed that Lynne’s funeral could be held at the Central Methodist Church, where thousands of displaced people had once found shelter. We worked with a local undertaker who had taken Lynne’s body, and paid R2,500 – not for the entire burial, but for her tiny coffin. The receipt, which read “baby coffin – R2,500,” is something I have kept to this day. No one should ever have to read those words – let alone a grieving mother trying to honour her child with dignity.

The plan was to bury her at Avalon Cemetery in Soweto – a vast municipal graveyard for those who cannot afford tombstones.

Sukoluhle Moyo on 8 Jan 2024 — unwavering in faith, radiant in spirit. (Photo: Charmaine Moyo.)



On the day of the funeral, we gathered at the church, singing and waiting. But the coffin never arrived. After about 15 minutes, I stepped outside and called the undertaker. They told me that someone had stolen the baby’s clothes from the mortuary.

Along with Cleo Buthelezi, a worker at the Methodist church whose compassion radiated like light, I rushed to a small shop in the CBD and bought a babygrow. We returned to the mortuary, and Cleo lovingly redressed little Lynne before she was placed back into her tiny white coffin.

The service was incredibly moving. Afterwards, we all climbed into taxis and drove for what felt like forever through Avalon Cemetery – kilometres of unmarked graves. We eventually reached the site. A bulldozer had carved a grave in hard, stony earth. The coffin was so small. No coffin like that should ever have to be made.

I remember the wailing. The tears of Sukoluhle and her extended family. I picked up a handful of that rocky soil – so dry, so unyielding – and dropped it into the grave. The sound of stones hitting wood is something I’ll never forget. Then the young men took turns with shovels, covering that tiny coffin as we said our final goodbye to baby Lynne.

Later, Sukoluhle held up the receipt and presented it to representatives of the mayor’s office. It was her protest, her testimony – a cry against a society that treats some lives as disposable.

Fierce critic, committed healer


But that wasn’t the end of her service.

Sukoluhle was not just a victim of this system – she became one of its fiercest critics and most committed healers. She accompanied friends to clinics, challenged xenophobic gatekeeping at healthcare facilities and fought to get the sick and injured the help they needed.

When her cousin Sinikiwe miscarried and developed a severe infection, Sukoluhle supported her through repeated hospital refusals. I took Sinikiwe to Charlotte Maxeke Hospital, and even after lawyers intervened to secure her admission, she was discharged late at night with no painkillers or antibiotics – simply because she was a foreigner. Sukoluhle arranged for her to return to Zimbabwe. Sinikiwe died shortly after.

And yet, Sukoluhle continued helping others. She assisted families experiencing violence in inner-city buildings. She stood between residents and slumlords. She was often the first to respond when someone collapsed, when someone was refused care, when someone had nowhere to go. She advocated for blind mothers, for disabled children, for undocumented asylum seekers.

Usindiso fire


After the devastating Usindiso building fire in 2023, she was one of the first people I called. She had lived in that very building, moving out only weeks before – after members of Operation Dudula entered and threatened to burn it down. Ironically, the fire was later traced to a drug-related killing, but her fear had been real, and justified.

When the fire happened, she showed up. She helped trace missing families. She accompanied burn victims to clinics and stood in long queues with them. She knew the names of the people who lived in those buildings. She knew their stories. She belonged to them, and they to her.

She spoke again at a Lawyers for Human Rights forum, alongside others challenging the criminalisation of poverty. She spoke from pain, but also from profound clarity. She asked the city to see her, not as a burden, not as a statistic, but as a mother, a citizen, a neighbour, a human being.

Pain, love, resilience


She lived through layers of violence – state neglect, xenophobia, gendered poverty, structural ableism. She survived gang violence in her building, displacement, hunger, systemic exclusion. And yet she loved fiercely. She mothered not only her children – Tamary, Charmaine, Lynne, and two other children lost too soon – but also a whole community.

We celebrated with her when Tamary regained her sight after cataract surgery – a miracle in a family marked by inherited blindness. I remember how proud she was.

There are too many stories to tell. Too much pain. Too much resilience. Too much love. She stood up, again and again, to speak truth to power. She helped others navigate the same broken systems that failed her. She never stopped believing a better world was possible.

Sukoluhle never made the news. But she made history. And if justice means anything in this country, her name deserves to be remembered – not only by those she walked with, but by all of us. Her life, lived mostly in obscurity, will never make headlines. But it should.

Because Sukoluhle Moyo taught us how to see.

She taught us to see injustice. To see one another. To see what really matters. Justice is not just about laws – it’s about whether a grieving mother can bury her child with dignity.

I feel like we let her down. Like this city let her down. But her legacy will not be forgotten.

Rest well, my friend. You have run your race. You mattered. You still do.

You can hear her tell that story in her own voice in the following video.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Q6prxFYlzqo

DM

Nigel Branken is a social worker, pastor, and long-time inner-city resident of Johannesburg. He has worked closely with displaced communities, migrants and the urban poor for over three decades. Nigel was both a social worker and a close friend to Sukoluhle Moyo, walking alongside her through some of her most painful and courageous battles. This tribute is written from that place of deep relationship – as neighbour, advocate, and fellow activist in the struggle.

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