ALI MPHAKI
THE flame of love is burning brighter for the Soweto Old Age Home couple who celebrated their first wedding anniversary in style yesterday.
Joyce Dlamini, 66, and Dan Chama, 68, were given special treatment at a Valentine’s Day event organised by staff, parents and children of Junior Colleges Sandton, where they were guests of honour.
The woman who donated the couple’s wedding cake last year is one of the parents at the school.
The couple were overwhelmed with joy, and Dlamini had the honour of proposing the toast.
She had college principal Jenna Axsel and staff in stitches when she answered “Oh yes, we like to drink” when asked if she drank alcohol.
Apart from being serenaded by song and poetry delivered by all the classes at the college, the lovebirds went home with a gift of a bottle of sparkling wine and glasses.
Speaking to The Star after the event, Chama, who is blind, said his love for his wife had “more than quadrupled” and that nothing would separate him from her.
“Like all couples, we have our problems, but every night I pray to God to give me the strength to continue loving my wife,” he said.
“The fact that we were able to marry at this late stage of our lives was not because of our own liking, but it was through God’s mercy, and we have to be thankful to Him.”
The couple married on Valentine’s Day last year. and their wedding received widespread publicity in newspapers and on TV.
“It was a very beautiful day which we will never forget,” Chama said.
He confessed that he battled to keep his jealousy in check as he could not stand it when his wife talked to other men at the old-age home. He added philosophically, however, that he did not know of any true love without an element of jealousy, although the feeling sometimes made him think he was insecure.
“Whenever there is true love there will be jealousy, and you can’t run away from that,” he said.
Echoing his sentiments, Dlamini said she was very possessive of him. “I do not want any woman near him.”
The two are inseparable and do almost everything together.