Since 2023, baby Unecebo Mboteni had been happily going to Little Champions Private Creche in Mdantsane. He had developed a routine and made new friends.
Everything was as right as rain until last week Thursday.
One minute he was in class, and the next his teacher could not find him.
Where was he? Could he have fallen asleep under a table while playing? No, he was fighting for his life after he had fallen into one of the school’s pit latrines.
Drum sits down with Unecebo’s grandmother, Bulelwa Goloda (58) while her daughter, the little boy’s mother, had gone to the state mortuary in Woodbrook, for his body to be released ahead of the planned funeral.
Baby Une is the youngest of four children. Andiswa Goloda-Mboteni, his mother has a 15-year-old boy, 10-year-old twin girls and three-year-old Une was the last born.
“I wish this could be over,” she says from her NU 2 home.
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“Talking about it like this makes it difficult for us to heal. It feels as though we are reliving those horrible hours.”
Despite this, she takes Drum to Thursday morning.
“He had gone to school like normal, but the school called his mother and told her there was an emergency, and that she should go to Makiwane (Cecilia Makiwane Hospital). She called me and told me to rush to the hospital and I did. Nothing could have prepared me for the cite that awaited me.
“He wasn’t wearing clothes, and we were told that he fell into a toilet.
“The teacher says she noticed he was not in class and when she could not find him, she immediately thought of checking the toilets. I asked if they are kept locked and she said no. When she got to the toilet, she did not see him, but she heard noises.”
According to Bulelwa, the teacher asked her colleagues to help her search for the boy because she could hear sounds or noises coming from the toilet.
“I do not know the exact details, but from what I understand they had to remove the seat of actual toilet so that someone could get in. They used a bucket for adult to get in and they were knee deep in the poor, but they could not see Une. They had to get some of the poor out, and then they eventually found him.
“The teacher said from the time she noticed he was missing to the time they found him it was about eight minutes, but this sounds like a lot of effort, and it could not have only been eight minutes.”
The school in across the road from a fire station and the school staff asked for help to get him to the hospital.
“The doctor told us he needed to be taken to ICU, but Makiwane does not have a children’s ICU. So he was transported by ambulance to Frere Hospital so he could be admitted in ICU.
“He was breathing through pipes. The doctors worked all night. They told us that his lungs were badly damaged and that the poo had travelled inside his body as he was struggling inside the toilet. The doctors said even if he does survive, he will be brain damaged. But Une gave in on Friday morning.”
Bulelwa says they do not blame anyone for what has happened.
“What we expect is that if a child needs to use the toilet they are taken to the available potties or the toilet. But either way, there should be an adult present.
“My daughter and son-in-law are not doing okay. She was struggling to pack his clothes and my son-in-law does not even want to see people right not. They are really strained.”
The family is planning to bury the boy on Friday, 26 April.
