April 11, 2013Produced by Peter Moyo
“Live life to the fullest. I love you all…” These were the chilling words contained in a suicide note left by a matric student, Victor Mabotja of Limpopo’s Mmotongwa Perekisi village, who hanged himself with a shoelace in his room. His matric results, school uniform and shoes as well as his athletics training kit were found on his bed. As thousands celebrated the improvement in the matric pass rates across the country, Victor had just received the bad news: he had failed his matric for the third time.
Victor’s death came just a month before the start of Teen Suicide week which highlights the problems around the rise in teenage suicides in the country. Another teenager, 17-year-old Nomsa Mokone, a pupil at Thabo Senior Secondary School in Soweto also hanged herself at her home two years ago after failing to see her name on the list of those who had passed matric in the newspaper. Her results later revealed that in fact she had passed five subjects and qualified to write supplementary exams in the two that she had failed.
Reports show that suicide accounts for nearly 10% of non-natural deaths among young people and overall, as much as 8 000 South African’s kill themselves annually, making suicide the third greatest cause of unnatural deaths in the country after homicide and unintentional causes. The World Health Organisation says South Africa has the eighth highest rate of teenage suicides in the world. The South African Depression and Anxiety Group also indicates that it receives up to 400 calls a day from teenagers blaming themselves for lack of preparation for their matric or failure.
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