Johannesburg - Five-year-old Doctor Maake burst into tears in the middle of a prayer session.
The mood was sombre on Monday as children at the Mantadi Child and Youth Care Centre gathered to remember three resident children who were stoned to death at the weekend.
Together, they were a “single big family” at the shelter and related as siblings. While some of the children are orphans, others were taken from their negligent families by social workers.
But on Saturday a dark cloud of bereavement fell over them and the small town of Mookgophong.
The bodies of their friends - siblings Hosea, aged 10, and Johanna Kekana, 12, and that of their cousin Bafana, aged nine - were found in the bush about 2km out of the town.
The girl was raped before she was killed, according to the police. The three went missing on Wednesday after taking part in the march organised by the Dikubu Primary School to demand more teachers.
They never returned. At the crime scene on Monday, journalists found three condom wrappers and tissue paper. It was not clear if this was related to the crime in any way.
The manager at the shelter, Anna Makwela, said the children were close to each other.
“Some of them knew they did not have parents, but we always taught them that they were brothers and sisters here, that’s why you see Doctor crying,” said Makwela.
The siblings’ mother, Sarah, and their cousin’s mother, Mpho, are sisters. But the three and their aunt’s other two children, aged three and five, have been staying at the shelter since June following social workers’ recommendations after allegations that their families had neglected them, a claim that the aunt vehemently disputed on Monday.
Now that her son Bafana has been killed, she said she had instructed her lawyer to fight for the return of her two other children from the shelter.
“I never agreed that they should take away my kids from me,” she told The Star.
She said the children had stayed with her mother, while she worked at a farm in the neighbouring town of Mokopane.
“They said my children were neglected only after my mother was admitted to hospital, but they were still under the care of my 21-year-old brother,” she said.
Mpho alleged that she was detained for a few hours when social workers removed her children, but was never charged.
She blamed the shelter and the Limpopo Social Development Department for the deaths.
“If they had taken care of them, they would still be alive,” she said.
However, her sister, who lost two children, felt differently. “I did not have a problem with them living at the shelter as they always troubled me by bunking school and they constantly disappeared from home,” Sarah said.
Makwela denied claims that the centre had neglected the children. - The Star