Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi will on Friday update parents of Parktown Boys’ High School on the latest developments regarding the Enock Mpianzi matter.
The school has been under pressure following the death of 13-year old Enock Mpianzi at an orientation camp in Brits. On Wednesday, Lesufi said he will be acting against Parktown Boys’ High School within 48 hours.
Lesufi said information that shows possible negligence by the school has emerged.
This comes as Mpianzi’s family has heard from an eye witness, who is also a learner at the school, about the last moments before his death.
It also appears that learners notified school staff present that Mpianzi had been swept away, but this information was ignored.
It’s understood that Mpianzi was swept away after the makeshift raft he built together with other learners capsized during an activity.
Lesufi said they are waiting for the police to verify the information.
Lesufi adds they have moved that learner from the school to ensure his protection.
“We felt that we needed to protect that child and on that basis, we took the family of this child to the family of the late Enock Mpianzi so that that information must not end up with us as a department so that the family may know what happened. That child was narrating the last moment they had with Enock, on the basis of that information, we moved the child to another school.”
On Tuesday, the family together with the South African Human Rights Commission went to the Nyati Bush campsite in Brits in the North West to conduct an inspection. However, they were denied access to the facility and were forced to enter the premises, by jumping over the gate.
Meanwhile, the family of another pupil who died at the Nyati Bush Campsite ten years ago wants the lodge to be shut down. Mellony Sias also drowned during a school camp at the same lodge.
Sias was a grade 12 pupil at Adamantia High School in Kimberley at the time of her death. She was there for her school’s hockey camp.
Her mother, Diana Sias, says she knows what Enock’s family is going through.
“I feel for that family because I know what they are going through. It is a pain you can never forget. When you allow your child to go on a school tour, you expect them to return alive and it is very sad when they return a lifeless body.”
Pictures of Sias playing hockey at the bush campsite are all the family has of her final moments alive. The family last saw her on a Thursday in April 2010, only to receive news on a Sunday that she had drowned on Saturday.
Her sister, Irene Smous, says that they were told that Sias slipped while in the river.
