“It has never happened that our country loses children in this way”, regretted Monday the Parliament in a press release, the committee in charge of Education condemning the access to alcohol granted to minors. In South Africa, the consumption of alcohol is prohibited for those under the age of 18.
At dawn on Sunday, the bodies of 17 young people, some as young as 13, were found in a popular drinking establishment in a poor suburb of East London (south). Four others later died in hospital. A total of thirteen boys and eight girls died.
The results of autopsies concluded Sunday evening, according to the authorities, and toxicological tests are still awaited. No trace of injury was found on the bodies, the authorities already ruling out the hypothesis of a tragedy caused by a crowd movement in the crowded room.
DJ during the evening of Saturday, Luhlemela Ulana however described to AFP a crowd of revelers pushing the door to force entry, bouncers quickly overwhelmed. “I stopped the music, I thought it would make people leave,” he explains. In vain.
Overconsumption of alcohol? Poisoning? Several avenues are still being discussed.
“We suspect something in the drinks or the food, or something that was inhaled” to be the cause of the deaths, said Unathi Binqose, a government security official.
Sinovuyo Monyane, 19, a survivor reached by AFP on the phone, evokes “a strong smell” resembling “pepper spray”. She tells of people who started shouting: “We are dying”, “we are suffocating” or “there are people who cannot breathe”.
The young woman, who worked during the evening to promote a brand of alcohol, said she lost consciousness herself in the room, “out of breath”. When she woke up, she had seen “extended bodies”, inert.
Grief
A bar employee told AFP that he doused unconscious people with water to revive them, thinking they were simply drunk. Before realizing: “I saw two people collapse, they died,” Sifiso told Promise Matinise.
A total of 31 youths were taken to hospital on Sunday. Vomiting, headaches, some complained of back and chest pain. Two people are still hospitalized.
“Investigators continue to search for any clues,” local police spokesman Thembinkosi Kinana said. A special police team was sent to the scene. No arrests have been made at this point, the bar has been cordoned off.
According to the authorities, most of the victims are students celebrating their end-of-semester exam results.
In the afternoon, about 100 grieving relatives participated in a prayer at the church in the township of Scenery Park. The day before, shocked parents gathered outside the bar to witness the evacuation of the bodies to the morgue.
Police Minister Bheki Cele, in tears, described “terrible” images on Sunday after seeing the bodies. President Cyril Ramaphosa regretted that teenagers had been admitted “to a place which, on the face of it, should be prohibited for people under 18”.
Informal bars, offshoots of “shebeens”, illegal drinking establishments during apartheid, are authorized or tolerated in the townships. But the legislation is not always applied there.
The head of the African Union Commission, Chadian Moussa Faki Mahamat, tweeted his sadness and addressed his prayers “at this time of untold sorrow and pain”.