Tiny kite-flyer pays high price

Another innocent child will be buried from Nelson Mandela Bay’s ganglands today. Here, his mother, teachers and even a gang members talk to Lee-Anne Butler about the hopelessness of a situation that gets worse instead of better. WHEN five-year-old gang victim Lucin Pieterse is laid to rest today in Port Elizabeth he will be wearing a new crisp white shirt, black pants and bow tie especially bought for him by his devastated young mother, Lucelle.

She had planned to buy him the new clothes for school.

“I never wanted to be the one to bury him – he was meant to bury me. I did everything I could for him with the little money that I have. I was planning to buy him new clothing to wear to school. I wanted to give him a good life, a better life but now he is gone,” she said this week.

Neighbours and community members rallied around the Pieterse family and assisted them by making food and planning the funeral that will start with a service at the Pieterse home in Ibex Street, Helenvale, before proceeding to the Church of Christ in Barcelona.

Then the tiny white coffin will be lowered into a grave at the Bethelsdorp Graveyard between 11am and noon.