Family cries foul after son died at University of Mpumalanga

The family of a 21-year-old student wants answers from the University of Mpumalanga after their son died at the institution.  Excellent Mlangeni collapsed and passed on, at the Mbombela campus.

The family says they were contacted two hours after his death, just before his body was taken to the mortuary.

Mlangeni’s family home is located within a 20 kilometre radius from the university. There is also a hospital less than five minutes away from the campus.

His distraught mother Doris Mlangeni and wants answers regarding her son’s death.  She says they are yet to receive a report on the incident.

“I still need answers, I need closure because they said Excellent passed on at seven o’clock and they only phoned us past nine. Can you see how many hours because if they did call me I was going to take my child myself with my car to the hospital?  I was not even going to wait  for an ambulance, I don’t know how the University of Mpumalanga operates because this is negligence really.”

Doris Mlangeni suspects that there was negligence on the part of the university:  

Excellent was studying Bachelor of Science in Agriculture. He was going to write his final paper next week. Mlangeni called on the university to improve its communication.

“The university must explain to us, I still need closure. I am saying they killed Excellent but I need closure as a parent so that I can be satisfied. The worst part of it is that they never wanted to wait for us to come to the scene.  They told us they are taking Excellent to the mortuary, then I refused and said you can’t do that, let me come and see my son. They insisted and said that we must be fast but they know White River is not far, what were they hiding because they wanted to take my child without me seeing him.”

Meanwhile, the Spokesperson for the University of Mpumalanga Tlangelani Ubisi says attempts were made to contact the family, but they could not be reached.

“There was a bit of delay on the side of the paramedics after that they tried their best to assist the student. Just before eight o’clock unfortunately they indicated to us that there’s nothing they can do to assist the student.  In terms of contacting the family, we went to the system because we have a student card of the student on our system, we tried to check the next of kin we got two numbers on the system that we tried to call, all of them took us on voice mail.”

LIFE MED Emergency Services, the group that sent the paramedics, said they will not comment at this stage. Mlangeni will be laid to rest on Sunday.