Pretoria - While thousands of parents across the country are excited as their children begin their schooling careers today, Mantwa Ntuli will be mourning the death of her 6-year-old son Siyabonga.
Her boy and his friend, Nqobile Mahlangu, 11, drowned in a water-filled excavation on a landfill site close to the informal settlement of Phomolong Extension 6, near Mamelodi East.
Their bodies were discovered in the early hours of Tuesday after the pair went missing on Monday afternoon.
Ntuli said she had come to Phomolong from Soweto to bring her son his school uniform as he was to start Grade 1 today, when she was informed that he was missing.
“I came here to drop off his uniform when I was told he was missing. My mother started making calls frantically and asking people if they had seen Siya, but we were told by our neighbour’s child that Siya had left with Nqobile for the waste dump site,” Ntuli said.
She said she, Nqobile’s mother, Sylvia Mahlangu, and residents immediately formed a search party. They left at about 8pm and went along the railway track which divides the waste site from the informal settlement.
“When we got to the railway track, a man said he saw two kids playing in the water, using discarded fridge (parts) as makeshift boats and playing in one of the water-filled excavations,” she said.
When the search party got to the trench they could see a boy’s head floating in the water.
“When we saw Siya’s body floating in the water at about midnight we alerted the police who later called the two divers who arrived at about 1am,” she said.
Two divers, one from Hammanskraal and the other from Bronkhorstspruit, came to lead the rescue, and Siyabonga’s body was retrieved first.
The diver swam across the perimeter of the excavation a few times without finding Nqobile’s body. “He even used a stick which is about 2m long to try to determine how deep the trench was and it was swallowed by the water,” she said. At 2.17am, Nqobile’s body was retrieved.
Mahlangu, said she had been excited that her son had turned the corner on his health problems which had seen him spend three months in hospital.
She was devastated that he lost his life this way.
“The last time anyone saw Nqobile was at midday when I sent him to a crèche that his younger brother attends.
“But nobody else had seen him since then and nobody knew his whereabouts,” Mahlangu said.
The mother of two, who fought back tears as she recalled the events leading to the discovery of the boys’ bodies, said the make-shift boat had capsized and that led to the drowning of the two boys. Both mothers said their children were naughty and inquisitive, but good children who loved school and enjoyed playing.
Ntuli said: “Which boys aren’t naughty and inquisitive at those ages?”
Community leader Petros Mogowane said the main issue regarding the landfill site was that it did not have a fence around it to stop children from gaining access.
“Already there have been about five kids who have died in a similar manner on the site.
“They need to put up fences so that children do not go there to play,” Mogowane said.
Ntuli and Mahlangu said they were not sure when the funerals of the two boys would take place as they were waiting for the post-mortems to be concluded.
Pretoria News