Faulty fence linked to tragic death of little boy
From the moment Lingomso Memani woke up on Monday morning, all he wanted to do was to play outside with his friends.
Little did his mother, Phakama, know that hours later, her three-year-old son would be dead after drowning in a water waste treatment plant in Humansdorp’s KwaNomzamo informal settlement.
Memani said Lingomso was anxious to play outside from the moment he opened his eyes, but she told him it was still too early.
But after eating his porridge, he ventured off with his fouryear-old friend to play.
“I was kneading dough and told him he must not go too far because I was going to fry vetkoeks so he and his friend could come and eat. That was the last time I saw him.”
She said it was shortly after 9am at the time.
“At around 10.50am, I asked his father, who had returned from work, to look for Lingomso so that they could come eat, but we couldn’t find him.
“I’m not the sort of parent that lets their child play for hours on end without checking on them,” Memani said.
She said the other child’s sister eventually came and told them that Lingomso had fallen into the waste treatment plant.
“Lingomso’s friend is very shy so when Lingomso fell, he didn’t tell an adult straight away, but went to his older sister who told us what happened,” Memani said.
She described her son as extremely active, a people’s person and a loving individual who got on with everyone.
“Wherever he went people felt his presence because he made everyone feel loved,” Memani said.
“He was not shy and always greeted people, strangers included. He was very brave and had a lot of love in his heart.”
Memani, who also has an 11-year-old daughter, said the family was distraught by what had happened and had been looking forward to Lingomso starting creche next week.
Memani said KwaNomzamo did not have safe spaces for children to play, no yard space, and shacks were cramped next to each other.
“I think what happened is that Lingomso stepped onto the waste water thinking it was concrete and only realised once it was too late there was water underneath,” she said.
Memani said she had not started making funeral arrangements yet.
Ward 7 councillor Lefty Vumazonke said he had pleaded with the Kouga municipality since 2017 to relocate the people of KwaNomzamo elsewhere because they lived too close to the waste water treatment plant, because of the stench and because it was not properly fenced off.
“We see this negligence of the DA government as the reason for this death,” he said.
Kouga municipality spokesperson Laura-Leigh Randall said the municipality’s internal investigation was still under way and officials would only be able to say what steps the municipality would take to help prevent a recurrence of such a tragedy once it received a report on Friday.
“We have undertaken to pay the full cost of the funeral as the incident happened at a municipal plant,” Randall said.
“This decision was based on humanitarian considerations and has been relayed to the family.”
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