The grade four learner of Hendrina Primary School, Sifiso Klaas Mlotha, is one of eleven victims in the province reported to have drowned since 4 March.<\/p>\n
“He and a friend went to a maize field about 25km away from home. Its was just after 15:00 when I received a call from the police to rush over to where his body was found,” his bereaved father, Dingaan, told the Observer.<\/p>\n
“I couldn’t understand how he ended up in the gully. I thought that someone had pushed him. I then went inside the water myself to investigate how deep it was and couldn’t go in far before the bottom dropped,” says Mr Mlotha.
\nSpokesperson of Hendrina SAPS, w\/o David Mbenekazi, said the flooding caused an overflow in the Cosmos Dam, resulting in a deep gully.<\/p>\n
“A total of 12 people, including motorists whose vehicles were swept away by flood water, were rescued the SAPS water wing,” Colonel Leonard Leonard Hlathi said.<\/p>\n
Sifiso is survived by his father, mother Zanele and sister Sibulelo (4).<\/p>\n
bridget@mobserver.co.za<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The grade four learner of Hendrina Primary School, Sifiso Klaas Mlotha, is one of eleven victims in the province reported to have drowned since 4 March. “He and a friend went to a maize field about 25km away from home. Its was just after 15:00 when I received a call from the police to rush …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2844,"featured_media":7348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"A family in Kwazamokuhle outside Hendrina buried their nine-year-old boy on Wednesday after he drowned on Saturday following heavy rainfall.","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[1024,1022,1021,1023,1012],"class_list":["post-7347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news-headlines","tag-boy-9-drowned","tag-heavy-rainfall","tag-hendrina","tag-kwazamokuhle","tag-water"],"category_labels":{"Category":"News","SubCategory":"Local news"},"tag_labels":["Boy (9) drowned","heavy rainfall","Hendrina","kwazamokuhle","water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7347","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=7347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}