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A Diepsloot family remains in deep shock after a mother allegedly killed herself and her baby.
Grace Dube and her baby died in hospital this week after she apparently poured methylated spirits over herself and her two-week-old son before setting both herself and her child alight.
Her brother, Lucky Dube, said the family was battling to come to terms to with Grace's bizarre death.
Dube said that his sister had died in Kalafong Hospital on Tuesday afternoon and his nephew had died in Pretoria Academic Hospital early Wednesday morning.
Sifting through the contents of his sister's shack, Dube said he did not know what to think.
"I keep asking myself why. I just can't understand why she would do this," he said.
Dube said he was called on Tuesday after his sister's neighbour, Thabane Mazibuko, and a friend had pulled the two burnt bodies out of the shack.
Standing in his sister's shack, Dube pointed out the burn marks on the bed where his nephew was allegedly set alight.
"We found an empty spirits bottle near where Grace was lying and an overturned paraffin stove," he said, while paging through birth registration documents, which he found in a baby bag hanging on a wall.
Dube said the family was devastated by what had happened.
"How can a mother do this? Why would she want to kill herself and her baby?" he asked.
"We do not know why she would want to do this. She had not even named her son. It just does not make any sense," he said.
Mazibuko said he was sitting outside a nearby spaza shop with a friend when he saw smoke coming from the shack.
"We ran to the house and started kicking the door, but it was blocked, so it was difficult.
"When we got the door open, we saw Grace lying burning on the floor and her baby on the bed," he said.
Filling up buckets of water, the two doused the flames and dragged the mother and her baby from the shack.
Captain Lucas Sithole said that they had opened an inquest docket into the deaths.
"At this stage the cause of the fire, which is still under investigation, is unknown.
"If anyone knows what caused the fire then they are to come forward and assist the police in their investigation," he said when asked if he could confirm the allegations that Grace had killed her baby and committed suicide.
n Barry Bateman reports that dozens of people in Mamelodi West have been left homeless after a blaze swept through the informal settlement yesterday morning.
No one was injured but at least 20 shacks and their contents were destroyed in the fire that started just after 9am.
Freelance photographer Thuli Mokwena arrived soon after it started to find residents frantically trying to extinguish the blaze using buckets of water and a hosepipe from a nearby house.
"I was told that the fire was started by a little boy who was playing with matches and burning paper inside his mother's shack."
Mokwena said that the fire quickly spread to other shacks, causing a chain reaction that soon got out of control. She said about 20 of the 40 shacks in the area were ablaze.
A three-year-old child, Liyabona Mhlabeni, was among those who narrowly escaped being killed in the blaze, after being rescued by a neighbour, Johanna Madanela.
Mokwena said that had the fire brigade not arrived so quickly on the scene, the entire area would have been destroyed.
She said people were not only worried about where they would sleep, but also about the education of their children because their school books had been destroyed.
Tshwane emergency services spokesperson Johan Pieterse said no one had been injured. |
