It was as if little “Coolerbox”, as Oyintando Bathuli (4) was known to the community of Marikana, a part of the Middelpos informal settlement at Saldanha, had a premonition that Sunday 31 March would be his last.
According to Jaconeline Solomons, the woman who looked after him since he was 4 months old, Coolerbox acted strangely the evening before, doing things he would not normally do. He came to stand before her and for a long while just looked intently at her. He just wanted to stay very close to her.
Coolerbox’s dad, Siyabonga Rolomana, left him in Solomons’s care when he worked.
On Sunday, around 11:00, Coolerbox was playing with friends on a pile of rocks next to their homes. As is the case with most of Marikana, an illegal electrical cable was hanging low over the rocks, connecting electricity from one shack to another.
Coolerbox touched the cable and was shocked unconscious. He had a burn mark on the side of one of his hands.
Phethile Mini told Weslander all the children fled in shock when Coolerbox fell. She ran towards the rock pile while also calling for Solomons and found Coolerbox lying unconscious.
Emergency services were called, and he was taken to the Vredenburg Provincial Hospital, where he was resuscitated a few times but he was declared dead at 19:00.
Solomons is heartbroken about losing this lively little boy she raised as her own. However, she hopes that his death will shine a light on the danger of the illegal power grid in Marikana that she and all the other residents are forced into because there is no other choice for them.
“We are people too. We can’t live in the dark. We have to make do with what is available to us, and it is not at all safe.”
