14 |8 AUGUST^2019 http://www.drum.co.za

THE PAIN

WON’T

GO AWAY

Little Asenathi died after

a tree branch fell on him at

school – but the governing

body says this could’ve been

prevented if government

had heard their cries for help

TEXT AND PICTURES BY NOMHLE MGABISA

ABOVE: Phatheka Gani is devastated by her
son’s death. She says Asenathi (ABOVE
RIGHT) wanted to become a pilot one day.

I

T’S a long drive from Lusikisiki to

Mthatha. The R61 linking the East-

ern Cape towns is straight but

beautiful, fringed by farmland and

rolling hills – but for Phatheka

Gani, it’s a journey that will forever

be tainted by dread and anguish.

Each minute of the nearly two-

and-half hour drive was accompanied by

a growing sense of fear that she’d never

see her young son, Asenathi, alive again.

She knew things were bad. Asenathi

(10) had been airlifted by helicopter from

Lusikisiki with a severe head injury after

being hit by a falling tree branch at

school. He was unconscious when he ar-

rived at Nelson Mandela Academic Hos-

pital in Mthatha less than 30 minutes lat-

er, while his mother was barely a quarter

of the way there.

She rushed into the hospital, accom-

panied by her son’s teachers who had

driven her there, her heart pounding as

she asked where her boy was.

Phatheka clung to the hope that he

may be okay – after all, why would he

have been airlifted to hospital if there

wasn’t a chance he might be saved? But

her hopes were soon crushed.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor told her.

She was too late.

Asenathi had dreamt of becoming a

pilot and Phatheka, an unemployed sin-

gle mother, prayed her son would one

day be able to soar above the clouds. In-

stead the only flying he would be doing

was with the angels.

“My son was mad about flying,” the

heartbroken mom says. “He’d make his

own kites and fly them, telling me he’d

one day fly an aeroplane. I believed in his

dream as he was a bright student.”

But that helicopter ride to hospital

would be the first and last time he would

take to the skies.

T

HAT Monday, 15 July, started

off like any other school day.

Asenathi, a Grade 6 learner

at Lusikisiki Village Junior

Secondary School, had been

in the playground with pals

Lindokuhle Dweba (12) and Alondwe

Nqubula (11) when they heard a loud

cracking noise.

The next moment Asenathi was un-

conscious on the ground, blood gushing

from his head, as Lindokuhle and Al-

ondwe screamed for help, clutching at

their bloodied hands, which had been

hurt by the falling branch.

The branch came from one of the

20-odd gumtrees that ring the school.

Parents had long complained about the

trees, saying they posed a danger to their

kids especially when strong winds blew.

Malibongwe Mtima, spokesperson for

the provincial education department,

says the school has an annual mainte-

nance budget which could have been

used to cut down the trees. If there

weren’t enough funds in the budget, he

says, the school should have asked the

department to intervene.

That’s what they did, says Nomboniso

Sigcau, chairperson of the school’s gov-

erning body (SGB), adding that their

pleas to the education department for

the trees to be trimmed or cut down had

always fallen on deaf ears.

For the past seven years the SGB has

been asking the education department

to either remove the trees or relocate the

school. She says the cost of removing a

single tree was more than R20 000. “Just

last October we again reached out to the

provincial [education] office and were met

with promises but no real commitment.

Now our worst fears have come true.”

Her grandson, who is also a learner at

the school, is haunted by the sight of his

schoolmates lying hurt beneath the tree.

In the days after Asenathi’s death,