Community advocacy movement Soil of Africa has vowed to help a Nellmapius family get DNA and post mortem results so that the family can bury their child.
The child died last year in October after a shack fire incident.
The dead child’s mother Ntswaki Nthakong (21) told Tshwane Talks that on the fateful day of the shack fire she had left the baby sleeping in bed while she went out to fetch water from the tap and upon her return she realised that the shack was on fire and her baby subsequently died in the blaze.
She said faulty electricity connections in the shack were blamed as the cause of the fire.
She lamented the fact that up until now her baby has not been buried as the authorities insist that DNA tests must first be released before the baby may be buried.
She insisted that she had not connected any electricity devices at the time the fire broke out.
She revealed that she is unemployed and doesn’t have the money to bury her child when she will eventually be allowed to do so and appealed to the City of Tshwane to help her with clothing items and burial costs of her child Kamogelo, who 2-years old when she died.
Nthakong pointed out that before she could DNA tests regarding the death of her son she was shunted from pillar to post and that she only did the DNA tests last month though the baby died last year.
She thanked the local Nellmapius community for having donated some groceries and R700 towards the burial of her son.
At the moment Ntswaki and her husband are homeless and stay as tenants in an area that is adjacent to Nellmapius known as Marikana.
Nthakong said she is experiencing sleepless nights and nightmares and can’t sleep as she sometimes hears the voice of her dead child calling out to her.
Grandmother Elizabeth Maleka also said she can’t sleep either due to the fact that her grandchild has not yet been buried.
“Let the government help us bury our child so we can know where the grave is and get closure,” she said.
She said about R10 000 would be needed for the burial site only, excluding all other funeral expenditures.
The dead child’s uncle raised suspicion that somebody might have poured petrol into the shack and some residents threw stones into the burning shack while dead child was in the process of being burnt.
Community member Jan Masango said if the area had proper, legal electricity connections then such a horrible incident would nit have happened.
He appealed to the City of Municipality to install proper electricity in the area.
He said the area is always experiencing shack fires every now and then.
The family indicated that they want to hurt Kamogelo here in South Africa and appealed to benevolent members of the community to donate a coffin and gravesite to them.
Meanwhile, founder and Chairperson of Soil of Africa advocacy movement Bongani Ramontja told Tshwane Talks that his organisation is of the opinion that it is inhuman for a child to stay in a mortuary for more than six months and explained that the reason behind the child not being buried as yet was the parents are from Lesotho and all their identity documents were burnt down during the fatal shack fire.
Ramontja said the police have delayed the process of getting the lady to be tested for DNA in order to determine whether the dead child was really her child.
He also revealed that post mortem results have still not been forthcoming and it seems like the local Councillor is not doing enough to get the family to bury their child.
“As Soil of Africa we are going to confront the forensic laboratory officers to release the DNA test results and we will fight for the dignity of the child as well as that of the family and we don’t care if they are from Lesotho or South because all that we want is for the family to bury the child,” he said.