Questions mount as second pupil dies
● Keamohetswe Shaun Seboko and Enoch Mpianzi — separated by 109km when they slipped beneath the surface of murky water — became entwined in a double drowning tragedy on their first day of school.
Enoch, a pupil at Parktown Boys’ High in Johannesburg, drowned during a water activity on a school trip at the Nyati Bush and Riverbreak lodge in the North West. Keamohetswe drowned in a crowded swimming pool at Bekker Primary School in Magaliesburg, Gauteng.
The deaths of the boys — both 13 years old — have exposed lax efforts to monitor the safety of children.
Neither school did a head count to ensure all pupils were accounted for, and both drownings went un- noticed for hours.
Keamohetswe’s body lay at the bottom of the murky pool until it was discovered by another group of pupils brought for a swim.
Bekker Primary governing body chair Willie Dry said that the water was clean, and staff had ensured this, and would otherwise not have let the children take to the water.
“But there was sediment which had sunk to the bottom because over the December holidays the caretaker did not sweep the pool. When the children got in all of the dirt was kicked up,” he said.
Keamohetswe’s funeral was held yesterday at Eldocrest Primary in Soweto, and he was buried at Klipspruit West cemetery.
Investigators are awaiting a postmortem report.
Repeated attempts to contact police spokesperson Brig Mathapelo Peters were unsuccessful.