By Rabbie Serumula
Sibusiso Lawrence once declared his truth to the world on Facebook: “Mabulala Ne is my name, and ‘I Am Suicide’ is the name of the album.” It was 2013, and he was a young artist dreaming of fame, unaware—or perhaps too aware—of the shadows that would follow. Eleven years later, his name became his deeds: the confessed killer of his girlfriend, Ntobeko Cele, before hanging himself.
Names carry power. They are anchors and prophecies, burdens and blessings. Sibusiso “Mabulala” is a name that foretold pain, his album title a chilling prelude to his final act.
On December 17, 2024, he took to social media to confess. He showed her lifeless body, a final cruelty shared with the world. He sparked outrage and heartbreak, but no justice could follow.
The indignity of Cele’s final moments being broadcast online is cruelty beyond words. It reduces her life to a spectacle, robbing her and her loved ones of the dignity she deserved in death. The viral sharing of such intimate violence not only deepens the wounds of her family but also perpetuates a culture where tragedy becomes content, and humanity is stripped away in favour of shock value.
In the graphic video, which has since gone viral, he claimed that Ntobeko gave birth to a child who was not his and that she had planned to leave him after receiving a financial windfall from the Road Accident Fund, money he had helped her secure. Whether this was truth or a distorted justification, the outcome was the same: another woman dead, another hashtag born.
Activists like Women For Change pleaded into the void: The trauma is real. The pain is generational. The violence is endless.
Minister of Police Senzo Mchunu spoke into the stillness: A reminder, he called it— a reminder of our GBV crisis. But reminders are useless without resolve.
More than half of South African women killed die at the hands of intimate partners, a sign of a society in decay. Sibusiso’s actions are a reflection of a nation where violence festers, enabled by silence and excuses. Activist Phumzile Van Damme called it what it is: a symptom of systemic rot. Yet, even as Ntobeko’s lifeless body became another marker of a woman betrayed, some turned their outrage towards her. Blame was shifted—“she should have known better,” they said—as if the onus to survive rests solely on women. Others parroted the tired refrain of “not all men,” a hollow defence that serves only to deflect accountability. These arguments do not challenge the cycle of violence; they sustain it.
Sibusiso’s declaration of his name and his album now feels less like a creative aspiration and more like a prophecy fulfilled in tragedy. “Mabulala” was not just a moniker; it became the shadow he could not outrun. Names carry weight—they shape how we see ourselves and how the world sees us. Perhaps it’s a reminder that the stories we tell ourselves, and the identities we choose to embrace, have the power to uplift or destroy.