‘World’s oldest person’ dies after living in THREE centuries to incredible age – and has the docs to ‘prove’ it
A GRANDMOTHER believed to be the world’s oldest person has died in South Africa at the incredible age of 128.
Mother-of-seven Johanna Mazibuko – who has lived in three centuries – died at her home in Jouberton.
She has documents proving she was born on May 11, 1894, and grew up on a maize farm – but never went to school and could not read or write.
Her daughter-in-law Thandiwe Wesinyana said it’s thought Mazibuko died from a stroke on March 3.
She said the entire community has “lost a mother”.
“We loved to pray together and spent most of our days drinking tea and talking,” she told News24.
“I don’t know who I’m going to have fun with anymore.
“A wound has opened, my heart is sore, and I am shattered. The community is saddened. We’ve all lost a mother.”
Mazibuko would have turned 129 in May.
Speaking to News24 to mark her birthday last year, Mazibuko said she was “amazed” to still be alive.
“Why am I still here? People around me have been dying,” she said.
“When will I die? What’s the point of being alive? The world has tired me because I am just sitting here doing nothing.”
Thandiwe said she took Mazibuko to hospital on February 14 and was treated for a stroke before being discharged on February 28.
She sadly died at home three days later and will be buried on Saturday in Jouberton.
Mazibuko was one of 12 siblings – of which three are still alive.
She had married an older widower Stawana Mazibuko and had seven children together – and more than 50 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Mazibuko previously told how she “lived so well” on the farms where she grew up.
She said there were “no problems then” – and missed the food she used to eat as a child.
The grandmother lived through two world wars, Spanish Flu – and even the coronavirus pandemic.
French nun Lucile Randon died aged 118 in January.
She died in her sleep at her nursing home in Toulon just a few months after vowing to break the world record for the oldest person ever.
Guinness World Records officially acknowledged her status as the world’s oldest person in April 2022 when Japanese woman Kane Tanaka died.
At the time Lucile – known as Sister Andre – said she wanted to overtake Jeanne Calment, another French woman, who died aged 122 in 1997.