A FORT Beaufort granny is only one year short of a prestigious century after celebrating her 99th birthday last Saturday, October 20.
The 99-year-old Tekkie Maria Goniwe (nee Joubert), was born on October 20, 1919, in the small Eastern Cape town of Stutterheim.
She married her husband, who has since passed on, in her early 20s and they were blessed with a total of six sons and four daughters.
Mid Karoo Express visited granny Goniwe on her birthday, at her home in Station Street in Fort Beaufort, where she resides with one of her daughters, Nosipho Keditse.
She is still very mobile and, according to Keditse, she still does some chores in the house despite her old age. She also recently visited her doctor, who gave her a clean bill of health. She loves to walk around in the yard and both her sight and hearing are still up to standard.
Goniwe attributed her ripe old age to the obedience she showed towards her parents as well as the food she ate in her youth.
“My parents loved gardening and we ate lots of vegetables like utyutu, pumpkin, African melon and white, as well as yellow, maize which my mother crushed by herself.”
She has a total of 13 grandchildren, eight great grandchildren and five great, great grandchildren.
