MARRIED AT LAST!

He called a radio station to dedicate a song to his sweetheart of 23 years and his story got Nkosinathi and Zandile the wedding of their dreams

- SIPHOKAZI ZAMA

FROM the moment he saw her he knew they were meant to be together – and 23 years later not a thing has changed.

Nkosinathi Hadebe is grateful Zandile Cele feels the same way about him. She has his heart, is mother to his two children and for her he will happily work long hours as a security guard to help put food on the table.

But for years it’s bugged him that there’s one thing he couldn’t give her: a wedding. The R3 000 or so he earns every month doesn’t stretch very far – it’s certainly not enough to pay the lobola the couple’s Zulu custom demands before a marriage can go ahead. And because they weren’t married, their families forbade them from living together.

It was this sad state of affairs that was playing on his mind when Nkosinathi (37) phoned his local radio station, Vuma FM, at the end of May to dedicate four love songs to his partner of more than two decades.

“During my shifts, it can get lonely and I was missing her,” he explains. “She’s the most important person in my life and I just wanted her to know that.”

When radio presenter Jacinta Ngobese asked him to tell her more about Zandile (37) it all came flooding out. They’d been dating since their early teens and desperately wanted to get married, but circumstances kept conspiring to keep them apart.

Jacinta appealed to listeners to help Nkosinathi and Zandile and her words didn’t fall on deaf ears – within a day of his heart-rending phone call, he’d received a flood of donations and kind offers.