Mandoza Foundation officially launched exactly one year after his death
The launch of the foundation has been done on Mpho's birthday, the day Mandoza also died.
Mandoza and Mpho Tshabalala
Mpho Tshabalala, Mandoza’s widow, has officially launched the Mandoza Foundation in Johannesburg, exactly a year after Mandoza’s death following his brief battle with stage 3 pharyngeal cancer, Letaba Herald reports.
Tshabalala launched the foundation today at Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital, Parktown. The foundation has been launched in partnership with the Cancer Association of South Africa (Cansa).
The foundation aims to educate the South African public on not just one type of cancer, but rather all shapes and sizes of the possibly life-threatening disease.
It prioritises the importance of going for your annual medical check-ups to catch the potential diagnosis early, so that the cancer can be treated sooner and more effectively.
If diagnosed late, cancer can be almost impossible to treat, and this is what ended up happening to one of South Africa’s beloved Kwaito stars.
“The first time we went to the doctor, when he was diagnosed with cancer, they said it’s stage three and you wonder what happened to stage one and stage two? Where were you when these stages were happening?” Tshabalala stated during an interview on a popular South African radio station this morning.
READ MORE: Kwaito star Anthony ‘Tsekeleke’ Motaung dies
Mandoza was diagnosed in the latter stages of 2015, and his treatment from then until his death a year later took place at Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital, formerly known as Johannesburg General Hospital.
The Tshabalala family were forced to go the public hospital route after they ran out of funds for treatment.
“We ran out of funds. Cancer will do a lot of things to you; financially, physically and also emotionally, so we had no choice but to go the public route, which was Jo’burg Gen,” Tshabalala said.
“From 2015 until towards the end of 2016 when he passed on, Jo’burg Gen was our second home.”
Tshabalala feels she should help wherever she can at the hospital, as they are aware of the challenges that patients face at the oncology ward at Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital.
September 18 will forever be a bittersweet day for Mpho Tshabalala, as it is her birthday, but she will forever mourn the passing of her beloved Mduduzi Edmund Tshabalala.
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– Caxton News Service
