A man nearly died when the flames of a raging fire consumed his two-room house at Dilinde section in Mpheni Block C.

Lucky Mtileni returned home after a serious drinking spree at a local tavern on Saturday at around 04:00. All he had in mind was to first enjoy his 1,25 bottle of soft drink and then go to bed.

"I lit the candle stuck in the mouth of a cooldrink bottle and put it on top of the stand in the kitchen," he told Mirror this week, pointing at the iron piece which is all that remains of the stand. "I drank the whole bottle. Then I went to the next room to sleep."

It seems as if the candle dripped onto the cloth covering the candle stand, and soon the cloth caught fire. Flames spread through the room, destroying furniture, curtains and all his groceries before it could invade the room in which he was sleeping. The heat and pungent smoke choked him until he woke up. He saw fire all around him. It had burnt up the wooden door which separated the kitchen and his bedroom.

"I saw the curtains burning terribly, but I had to rush that way to exit," he says. "The window pane slit my forehead and some areas on my face, as you can see for yourself."

After noticing the Mtileni house in flames, people from around started jumping over his fence and arrived at his yard with the intention of rescuing him. He told them to leave him alone and mind their business as he stood at the front of the burning house.

"Go away! You can't just slip under my fence or jump my fence," he told the villagers. "You're transgressing!"

Members of the community, however, didn't move away. They suspected that Mtileni might have set the house alight to let his spouse, Nkhensani Bila, die in the fire. So they alerted the Makhado Fire Brigade, who responded quickly by coming to extinguish the fire. It was then established that Nkhensani was away and not in the burning house.

In the meantime, rumours spread throughout the entire sections of Mpheni and Elim of a man who had set his own house on fire, so that members of his community could contribute R5 per household to help him.

"Some people are mad," he says in answering to the allegations that he burnt down his house intentionally. "How can I destroy my house? I worked hard to build my house."

The Dilinde Civic say they are deeply touched by what had happened to the Mtileni family. "But we'll first investigate the matter before we can even think of helping out," says the chairperson of the civic, Mr Obed Maumela. "This is a critical case anyway. Mtileni admitted to the civic that he came home drunk and there are these allegations of his having set his house alight."

Mtileni's wife doesn't say much. "What had happened is not good," she says briefly.

When Mirror left the Mtileni family, Mtileni himself went back to piecing together a small shack for shelter while his spouse squatted on the concrete rabble with a sad look in her eyes.