A PUPIL from Vaal Technical High School in Orkney, North West, hanged herself after learning that she had failed the 2023 matric exams.
The incident has devastated her parents, who said when she went to collect her results from school on Friday morning, 19 January she was happy and couldn't wait to show them.
On that day, Onthatile Makgale (19) asked her parents to wait for her to return from school so she could open the results in their presence.
Her father, Modiseemang Ratsie, said together with her mother, they quickly rushed somewhere but when they returned, their daughter wasn't home yet.
“As time went by, we became worried, and I started looking for her. I suspected that maybe the results were not what she had hoped for and that she might have decided to hide them from us,” he said.
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Modiseemang said after 4pm, when their daughter was still not home, he decided to call her friend.
“The friend who went with her to fetch the results informed us that she had left my daughter in town. She also told us that my daughter had asked her how she would feel if she killed herself.
“We found her in my backyard late on Friday night. Her body was hanging from the tree. She used a chair to climb up there. I'm heartbroken,” said the father.
He said that he was very close to Onthatile.
“We had a good relationship, and she was like my friend. We spoke about almost everything, and death wasn't something that I’d pick up during our conversations,” he said.
Modiseemang said her bad matric results shocked them because Onthatile was a bright child.
“Her results during the year were okay. There was no sign that she might not make it."
Police spokeswoman Colonel Adele Myburgh confirmed that cops have opened an inquest docket.
“It was about 11.30pm when the police were called out to Orkney. Upon arrival, they found the body of a 19-year-old girl hanging from a tree. At this stage, there's no foul play suspected,” she said.
