Alina Mogorosi

I met Alina on a shoot in Bloemfontein. She was a bystander in the crowd that had gathered. She was standing under a purple umbrella kindly offered by a young schoolboy from the area and I couldn’t help but notice her, though she is only 4ft tall.
I saw this city grow up around my house. We built a home here in 1967, there were just gravel roads back then and there was veldt all around us. I had to walk many kilometres every day to the nearest water point. Today my home is in the middle of an industrial area. I am all alone now, my husband passed and my kids have moved on. All these years my husband was involved with the release of Ntate Mandela. My husband passed in May 1990, exactly three months after Ntate Mandela was released. He was a man of the heart (meaning that he took everything very serious and personal.) A heart is not made for too much of anything, too much pain, too much bitterness, too much anger. And then, when Ntate Mandela was released, too much joy. His heart literally could not handle all that joy …