An image of Nkosinathi Innocent Maphumulo (now popularly known as Black Coffee) sitting with his hands visibly clasped together has social media users baffled.
The image, which features the Grammy Award-winning DJ sitting alongside his son Esona hanging out on a yacht, has been widely circulated on X (formerly known as Twitter) as social media users react to finally seeing the DJ’s left hand.
“Black Coffee and his son,” shared @_mashudu_m along with the image.
Black Coffee and his son pic.twitter.com/BaVte5XB88
Fans have shared various comments in response to the post.
One fan asked, simply, “So he bought the arm?”
So he bought the arm? pic.twitter.com/nzr6LMZ1tL
— Amo Botake 🇿🇦 💭 (@Only_Botake) August 20, 2023
Another questioned if the image was real and if he had fixed his hand. “He fixed the hand? Or ke photoshop, or he was never injured? What's the story?”
He fixed the hand? Or ke photoshop, or he was never injured? What's the story
@khumotings shared some perspective on his disability, “He was injured, but he's been getting treatment so he's slowly regaining the mobility of the hand.”
@_mashesha also added, “Why are we policing Black Coffee’s hand? Coffee has told his story many times about his hand. It’s his choice to keep it in his pocket and it’s also his choice to take it out… or am I wrong? 🤷🏾♂️😏”
As has been widely publicised over the years, Black Coffee's left hand was left paralysed when he was involved in a car accident at a young age.
Coffee most recently told the story of what happened to his hand last year during an interview on ‘The Diary of A CEO’ YouTube podcast.
The 45-year-old DJ explained how on the evening of February 10, 1990, a few hours before Nelson Mandela was due to be released from Robben Island, he and his cousins went outside to watch on as people marched past their home.
Then, out of nowhere, a car came speeding towards them and rammed through the crowd. “I was not in the front (of the crowd) but I was maybe 20% in and I just blacked out. People were screaming and when I woke up there was fire, people were angry.
"Basically this driver switched off his lights to literally just kill people with his car. So they burned the car, and they burned the guy too. So what happened is, I dislocated my shoulder, but severely. I had no bruises, no cuts, it just came off.
“Meaning my nerves that connect the arm to the body snapped. The injury is called brachial plexus, which is the damage of nerves. There’s nothing you can do to fix damaged nerves, they can only fix themselves.”