A centenarian form Madadeni Section 3 cast her fifth vote on May 7 at Khulakahle Primary School, as the country marked 20 years of democracy.
Granny Jumimah Dlamini (111) of Madadeni Section 3 in Newcastle in Northern KwaZulu-Natal cast her vote on election day, having not registered as a special voter.

Dlamini,said, “I woke up at six ‘o clock in the morning, waiting for the IEC
officials to come and help me cast my vote. When I realised they were not coming I decided to go to bed.”
She believes that it is important to vote for the government of your choice. “I never went to school, or my children, because of the apartheid era,” she said, adding that democracy brought positive changes in her life, ‘as I am no longer living on the farm’.
The attendance was poor at the voting station which she visited to cast her vote, and only a few elderly people
were queuing.
Dlaminis family claims she is much older, but her ID states that she is 111.
Granny Dlamini’s eyesight is still good and her memory strong: “I was a teenager when World War I broke out in 1914,” she says. “I was born in Mgungundlovana in Utrecht.”

She had ten children, five girls and five
boys. Only one child survives, 79-year-old Sibongile Dlamini, her fifth-born. She has 36 grandchildren and many great-grandchildren.
Ntombanas husband, Petros, died 58 years ago at the of 70.

Her secrets to a long life: “Eating the right food and not junk. I eat meat, pap, samp, maas, izinkobe (boiled mealies) and isijabane (vegetable porridge). I never use cooking oil.”
She also laments the ways of today: “There was no poverty in our culture until people stopped cultivating soil. People planted their own vegetables and had livestock to feed their families, not like this lazy generation where everything is bought.”
Granny Dlamini’s reat-granddaughter, Mpume Ndlanzi (20), says her grandmother always tells them tales of the past.
“Our grandmother can narrate a story of Wolrd War 1 as if she was part of it,” she said. “Children in the neighbourhood always visit great-grandmothers home for advice. We laugh all the time when we are with our grandmother.”
Ntombana is certainly a model for a long and healthy life, and is proud of her right to vote as a South African.