The Sunday News
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday News Reporter
TREVOR Nyoni recalls that on the Saturday of 6 November in 2021, his wife gave their son, 10-year-old Melusi Nyoni, a warning that she has now grown to look back upon with regret.
That afternoon, the Mkhithika Primary School pupil in Bulawayo, had come home with an ashen look, as what looked like a white powder covered his body from head to toe.
As she administered swift justice, like any diligent and righteous mother would, Nyoni accompanied her beating with words that would tragically come true only a few days later.
“I remember that the Saturday before that fateful day, his mother had seen him come ashen from head to toe, indicating that this was a child that had been playing in water. She had chastised him and she gave him a warning while beating him. Right now, she feels like her words led to the unfortunate incident because she said that he will die in water if he continued playing in water. She didn’t know that they were playing in a deep pit. Since it was the rainy season, she thought they were playing in tiny bodies of water,” Nyoni told Sunday Life.
On the afternoon of Wednesday, 10 November, Nyoni received a phone call that would change his life forever. His son, together with his 10-year-old friend Lenon Musariri, had just drowned not far away from their house in Cowdray Park. After a day at school, the pair had wandered, with three other boys, to a pit that had been excavated to accommodate fuel tankers by a local company.
“The five kids were coming from school. They came from school and went to this pit and when they got there, because this was something that seems they were now used to doing, they said let’s get in the water, as we usually do. However, three of them refused and said we can’t get in the water, we would rather first go home and change our uniforms. That’s how the two of them remained behind. So, what happened to them and how they got into the water and drowned is something that I cannot testify to. Nobody knows. I only got a phone call while I was at work to tell me what happened,” Nyoni said.
Councillor Kidwell Mujuru
Naison Sibanda, an uncle to the late Lenon, said that the family had found it hard to get over the wound inflicted on their hearts by the sudden and tragic death of Lenon.
“After the death of Lenon, his grandfather almost died because the death of his grandson affected him. He was admitted to hospital and for over three months he could not even work. On the Nyoni side of the family, Melusi used to share a bedroom with his sister and it has affected her greatly, she still had nightmares about the death of her brother. When Lenon’s grandfather passes by the garage sometimes, he parks by the side and just breaks down and cries. Trevor’s father lives behind the garage and he has to live with the sight of people working every day and continuing with their lives without acknowledging what happened there,” he said.
Open pits have become a source of grief for families in Bulawayo, particularly in the western suburbs, where a lot of companies leave such places unprotected and unguarded, flaunting council regulations in the process.
The pits are scattered all over in Bulawayo with some in Luveve, Pumula East, Mpopoma, Pelandaba West, Nkulumane, Cowdray Park, Matshobana and in Entumbane. In February last year, a 15-year-old Pelandaba West boy drowned in an abandoned pit, three months after a 12-year-old girl who drowned in the same body of water. In March 2020, a 12-year-old boy drowned in a sewer pit between Nketa 8 and Nkulumane 5 suburbs.
At the time of the Cowdray Park incident last year, the area’s councillor Kidwell Mujuru said that the responsibility of securing the pit lay with the fuel company, although the week before the incident, it had been transferred to another owner.
“Right now, that pit has been fully covered and from any day now they will start pouring fuel from there. That pit had been abandoned for three or four years but the most painful thing is that within a month after our children had drowned, they had started draining the water and by the start of 2022, they were already building. In short, it’s now a garage,” the late Lenon’s aunt, Christine Musariri said.
Musariri said that both families needed counselling as the incident had wounded them deeply.
“These families needed counselling. The kids were only 10-year-olds and we expected people to care about the wellbeing of the families after the incident,” she said.
Nyoni said that although they had tried to get in touch with the owner of the garage, they had not heard from him in months.
“After this unfortunate incident, we didn’t even get one person from the owners of the pits to come and commiserate with us as families that had lost two children. As a person, when a person steps on your foot, you expect them to come and say sorry but nothing of that sort has happened. We tried to talk to the owner but we could not find out who it was. So, we used other means to get that information. One of us went to the pit and found that there were people that were already in construction at the site. So, the person we sent pretended that they were looking for a job. We found out who the owners of the pit were when the incident occurred. After one phone call, he (owner) asked me to app him. He then blocked me after that. In May he sent a representative, a Taurai Gondo who asked us to put down our request for compensation so that he can forward it but from that day, he disappeared,” Nyoni said.
Musariri said while they were not seeking any compensation at the time of the incident, their overall outlook had soured over time as they felt that both families, and the memories of the two late schoolboys, had been disrespected.
“From the beginning we didn’t think about compensation, we wanted them to come to talk to us and apologise over what happened. Now, we are coming across as people that are angry because we feel like we were treated like dogs and the children that died were nothing more than puppies that were tossed aside. That’s how we are feeling,” he said.
Attempts to get hold of the owner of the garage, who reportedly travels in and outside the country frequently, were fruitless as his phone was unavailable.
