Nthabiseng and Mahlatse Makwaeba were born to Juard and Elizabeth Makwaeba in Lebowa, South Africa. They were also craniopagus twins. On June 14, 1994 Ben Carson separated the girls in a 20 hour surgery.
The operation had been originally planned for mid-April of that year, but it got delayed. The girls were sick and wouldn’t have survived much longer without the surgery.
After the surgery, Nthabiseng went into cardiac arrest and died just a few hours after. Being the smaller of the two, she depended on Mahlatse’s heart to live. Nthabiseng had a surgery shortly after birth for a congenital heart defect, but the defect was greater than doctors thought. Mahlatse died also, several hours after her sister. She had depended on her twin's kidneys to live. The girls were completely reliant on each other to survive.