How Asanda Zincume transformed her life from despair to determination
In 2024, I met Asanda Zincume, a homeless woman from Durban, KwaZulu-Natal who was addicted to drugs, deeply traumatised and without drive in life. However, a year later she has transformed, is sober and beaming with purpose.
At the time, I was assigned to connect and interview unhoused women for IOL’s Elevate HER campaign. In our first encounter, Zincume first beheld me with eyes full of uncertainty and hesitation.
I was, after all, a journalist, asking to stick a camera up to her face and question her on the tragic series of events that left her destitute and sleeping rough in the city’s notoriously dangerous streets.
Yet, in explaining my request, I saw her uncertainty and unsaid questioning of my intentions fade. Zincume, like countless other homeless women, can determine one’s sincerity or lack thereof, which is an instinct needed to survive in the streets.
What first struck me was that she was wearing high-heeled ankle boots and had subtly done her makeup. This, I subsequently learned, was armour she wore to protect herself from society’s prying and often predatory eyes.
Addicted to whoonga and taking methadone to counteract the effects, Zincume told me a story of a tumultuous upbringing, sexual grooming by an older man and the pain of contracting HIV.
I recalled trauma specialist Dr Gabor Maté saying: “Don’t ask why the addiction, ask why the pain.”
Zincume told me that at the age of 17, she encountered a 20-year-old man selling whoonga in Durban. In exchange for sexual encounters, he gave her the drugs and a place to stay.
However, the man was subsequently caught for drug selling, and she was unexpectedly without shelter. “I was terrified of being attacked and raped while I was sleeping and killed, with my body probably being disposed of like rubbish,” she said.
She also faced gender-based violence (GBV) where a man tried to coerce her into sleeping with him and beat her within an inch of her life because she refused.
With quiet confidence, Zincume also shared the horrors she has seen on the streets and how they had moulded her into the woman she is. Yet, her strength was palpable; she had weathered impossible storms and come out.
Listening to her, I sensed that a dam had broken, and she had longed to speak about this chapter of her life to someone without a vested interest in it. I felt honoured that she entrusted that I would tell her story, with all the dignity it deserved.
The image of the homeless in contemporary media is one of filthy, reeking, drug addicts and criminal. In writing about Zincume ,I sought to challenge this vilification and humanise her in a society where she is seen as less than.
In her, I saw many facets of women in my life, those who fight battles on their own, the ‘strong’ ones and those who don’t suffer fools. I walked away from the interview emotional, a fact which I tried to conceal.
Upon the completion of the campaign, IOL delivered dignity packs to women from the Strollers Women’s shelter. At the back of my mind, I kept thinking of Zincume who was not at the event.
For that reason, I went and bought soap, toothpaste, a toothbrush and sanitary pads for her. She had been among the first homeless women I interviewed, and she had given me the strength and courage to approach others and request the highly sensitive interviews.
So, when I saw again, I was elated to see the progress she had made. Her skin was glowing, and she was excited to let me know that she is studying to be a plumber. Hers is a story of perseverance, self-belief and faith. I can’t wait to see what wonderful things the future has for her!
IOL News