Sinamandla Zondi’s family shocked after death of their ‘healthy boy’

Before Durban City midfielder Sinamandla Zondi collapsed in the prematch warm-up of Tuesday's game against Milford FC, his father and “No 1 fan” Lungisani Zondi was in the crowd looking forward to watching his son play.

An hour later, Lungisani learnt of his 22-year-old son's death.

Sinamandla had been taken to hospital from Tuesday night's Motsepe Foundation Championship match between second-tier leaders Durban City and seventh-placed Milford. When news came that the player had died, the match was abandoned at halftime with Milford 1-0 up.

Family spokesperson Ntokozo Ndlovu, Sinamandla's uncle, described events from his brother Lungisani's perspective.

“My brother is distraught — he never missed his [son's] games, especially the home ones, so he was there yesterday [Tuesday] as his No 1 supporter,” Ndlovu said on Wednesday.

“He [Lungisani] was happy when he saw Sinamandla was starting, but when the match started he noticed the boy was not on the field. He was told at halftime the boy had collapsed before he was taken to hospital where he died.

“He never noticed someone collapsed [in the warm-up] before the game started.”

Ndlovu said the family are waiting the postmortem, adding Sinamandla never showed signs of sickness since he was born on December 15 2002.

“It's difficult to understand what killed our son. As a family we are shocked because Sinamandla was a healthy boy who hardly even took headache tablets because he was strong. We're waiting for the medical tests and postmortem.”

Sinamandla was originally from Greytown, 75km from the KwaZulu-Natal capital Pietermaritzburg where his family later settled. He joined Durban City when he was 16, starting in the club's DStv Diski Challenge side when the team was still Maritzburg United.

Maritzburg moved from Pietermaritzburg to Durban at the start of the 2024-2025 season, renaming themselves Durban City.

Sinamandla is survived by his parents and two younger sisters. 

Before his death, he had featured in almost all of City's games this season.

Sinamandla is the fourth Durban City player to die in recent years. The others are:

• midfielder Mondli Cele (car crash in January 2016);
• midfielder Mlondi Dlamini (car crash in October 2017); and
• striker Luyanda Ntshangase (struck by lightning before dying in May 2018 in hospital, where he had been in an induced coma for weeks).

SowetanLIVE