At least 21 teenagers, the youngest possibly only 13 years old, died this weekend after a night out at a tavern in the municipality of South Africa in a tragedy where the cause remains unclear. Many are believed to have been students celebrating the end of their high school exams on Saturday night, provincial officials said.
There were no visible injuries on the bodies. Authorities ruled out a stampede as a possible cause and said autopsies would determine if the deaths could be related to poisoning.
Crowds of people, including parents of missing children, gathered outside the tavern where the tragedy occurred in the East London city on Sunday as mortuary vehicles collected the bodies, an AFP correspondent was able to verify.
Senior government officials rushed to the southern city. Among them was National Police Minister Bheki Cele, who burst into tears after leaving a morgue where bodies were stored.
“It’s a terrible scene,” he told reporters. “They’re pretty young. When they tell you they’re 13, 14 and you go there and you see them. You break.”
Reuters/Stringer
The Eastern Cape provincial government said eight girls and 13 boys had died. Seventeen were found dead inside the tavern. The rest died in hospital.
People over the age of 18 are allowed to drink in township taverns, commonly known as shebeens, which are often brazenly jowled with family homes or, in some cases, within the homes themselves.
But safety regulations and minimum drinking age laws are not always followed.
“We have a child who was there, who died at the scene,” said the parents of a 17-year-old.
“We didn’t think this girl was going to die this way. She was a humble, respectful girl,” said grieving mother Ntombizonke Mgangala, standing with her husband outside the morgue.
A 17-year-old girl who identified herself to the Reuters news agency as Lolly said the tavern was popular with teenagers.
President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is attending the G7 Summit in Germany, he sent his condolences.
He expressed concern “about the reported circumstances in which such young people gathered in a place that, on its face, should be off-limits to people under the age of 18.”
Authorities are now considering whether to revise liquor licensing regulations.
“It’s absolutely unbelievable… to lose the lives of 20 young people just like that,” said Provincial Premier Oscar Mabuyane, visibly shocked.
He was speaking to reporters before the number of victims was updated to at least 21.
He condemned the “unlimited consumption of liquor”.
“You can’t trade like that in the midst of society and think that young people aren’t going to experiment,” he said outside the tavern, in a residential area called Scenery Park.
Empty alcohol bottles, wigs and even a pastel purple sash reading “Happy Birthday” were found strewn on the dusty street outside the two-story Enyobeni tavern, according to Unathi Binqose, a government security official who arrived at the scene. at dawn.
Ruling out a stampede as the cause of death, Binqose told AFP: “There are no visible open wounds.”
“Forensic (investigators) will take samples and run tests to see if there was any kind of poisoning,” he said, adding that the bar was packed.
Local newspaper DispatchLive reported on its website: “Bodies lay strewn on tables, chairs, and on the floor, with no obvious signs of injury.”
Parents and officials said they understood many of the dead were students holding “pen down” parties held after the end of high school exams.
Local television showed police officers trying to calm a crowd of parents and spectators gathered outside the club in the city, which is on the Indian Ocean coast some 620 miles south of Johannesburg.
