{"id":64903,"date":"2017-03-26T06:00:13","date_gmt":"2017-03-26T04:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mobserver.co.za\/?p=64903"},"modified":"2017-03-27T12:42:57","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T10:42:57","slug":"update-government-will-pay-funeral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/news-headlines\/2017\/03\/26\/update-government-will-pay-funeral\/","title":{"rendered":"Update: Government will pay for funeral"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mhaule assured the family that her department would work with every organ involved in the investigation to ensure that justice was served for the family.<\/p>\n

She said the African National Congress, individuals and various structures of the government in the province would cover the cost of the funeral and make arrangements to secure a better house for the family.<\/p>\n

“We will buy the coffin and food, but this does not mean we are celebrating. We are mourning with the family,” said Mhaule.<\/p>\n

Read previous stories here:<\/p>\n

Update: Learner dies in Hospital<\/a><\/p>\n

Media frenzy over paralyzed student<\/a><\/p>\n

Update: Headmaster remains suspended<\/a><\/p>\n

Siphamandla was allegedly assaulted by the principal of his primary school in Mhluzi late last year, after he was accused of stealing R150.<\/p>\n

The principal was suspended and was facing a disciplinary hearing within the department on a charge of misconduct.<\/p>\n

She said her department would also send a team to Manyano Primary School to provide counselling to Siphamandla’s former schoolmates as “they were traumatised by his death”.<\/p>\n

The postmortem on Siphamandla’s body will be conducted on Thursday. He died in hospital last Sunday following a deterioration in his health.<\/p>\n

Siphamandla’s uncle, Johannes Choma, asked the government delegation to allow them to bury Siphamandla on April 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A government delegation led by Mpumalanga Basic Education MEC Reginah Mhaule, and including Mayor Mike Masina, on Tuesday visited the family of Siphamandla Choma, the 14-year-old boy who died after he was allegedly assaulted by his school’s principal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2844,"featured_media":64821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"Yaseen Gaffar","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news-headlines"],"category_labels":{"Category":"News","SubCategory":"Local news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}