Slain former rugby player Lindani Myeni has been described as a strict and responsible person with a promising future. His funeral service has taken place at the Eskhaleni TVET college in Empangeni on the KwaZulu-Natal north coast.
Myeni was shot and killed during a confrontation with US police in Hawaii.
His emotional family and friends paid tribute to his memory.
His wife Lindsay says her husband was always full of smiles and loved music.
“Nobody wants to speak because you don’t know how giving he was, you don’t know how fun he was. You know, if he was coming in right now he’d come in barefoot, singing ‘coz that’s how he always arrived barefoot and happy. You know Lindani was so many things to so many people that you can’t describe him. To me he was my home, to me he was safety, I trusted him the day I met him and he kinda fell in love with me for that and I fell inlove with him for the way he didn’t trust me.”
Myeni’s friend from the United States, Bernard Mthembu, says that as a black man in America, he now fears for his life after the killing of his friend.
“I was broken ‘coz he’s in Hawaii and I’m in Utah, so I woke up and I was getting ready for work and I checked my phone I saw Lind’s texts and it said they took my king and I just broke down, I cried. And after that I remeber I was scared even to go outside, I was scared to go outside and I had this hate, anger in me. You know like I was asking myself what have we done to these people, that they treat us in such a manner.”
In the video below SABC News’ Jayed-Leigh Paulse speaks to Mthembu and other mourners:
