EDITORIAL | A thorough, truly independent probe is the least dead boys’ families deserve

A few days after Tony “Bhobhoza” Tshwenu, five, and Siyabonga Nkonyana, seven, drowned in a quarry at the Skierlik Mountain View informal settlement in Tshwane on February 27, a Sunday Times Daily reporter visiting the scene came across workers hurriedly erecting a fence around the quarry. Community leader Mzwandile Dyantyi said engineers started working in the area as far back as 2002. “There was never security or a fence,” he said. Asked for comment, King Civil Engineering Contractors’ financial manager Mark Harris said: “I do not want to speculate on what led to the deaths, but will rather wait for the investigation being conducted by the department.”

That investigation has now been instituted, as promised by Gauteng MEC for public transport and road infrastructure Jacob Mamabolo. He announced on Sunday that advocate Thomas Bokaba has been appointed to “find the relevant facts and accountability” for the deaths. His job will be to establish if there were any failures on the part of the department and contractor. The quarry where the boys died is at a road construction site on the K54, part of an upgrade to Solomon Mahlangu Drive.

But here’s the part of Mamabolo’s statement that should cause concern: the investigation, he said, will be “completely independent of the department”. 

An investigation commissioned by the department, but “completely independent” of it.

“The department’s role will be to provide the investigator with access to all materials and information within its power and control that the investigator regards as relevant to the purposes of the investigation. The department will also assist with facilitating meetings with any person who may have information relevant to the investigation, as well as provide such assistance as may be necessary for the investigator to obtain materials and information requested from third parties,” Mamabolo said.

It is laudable that the department moved fast on this and appointed a senior counsel to probe the cause of the drownings within two weeks. But this is the same department we reported on three weeks ago for failing to spend its full budget. Gauteng did not spend more than R4bn of its R132bn budget and the biggest culprits were the departments of education, health, social development, human settlements — and roads and transport, which underspent R637.2m. Imagine how many fences that money could have built.

Little Siyabonga’s mother, Pretty Mabila, told us she needs answers as to why fencing was not erected from the start. If Mamabolo wants to inspire any confidence, he needs to ensure this investigation is a thorough and truly independent one. Honest answers are the least he owes the families.