THE body of an 18-year-old teenager who slipped and drowned in the Klipvalley River in Kliptown, Soweto, on Tuesday, 14 November, has been discovered.
The body was discovered by the Joburg Emergency Services’ diving team on Wednesday, 15 November, at 10.52am.
Local residents told the Daily Sun that they are concerned because no one knows who the teenager is or where he came from, and the body has not yet been identified.
A resident who lives opposite the river, Mariah Chabangu, said she was relieved because knowing that there was a body in the river, which is only a minute away from her house, was stressful.
"Going to sleep knowing there was a dead body there was traumatising. When I saw a helicopter arrive at the river, I had hope that the body would be recovered," she said.
She appealed to the government to keep an eye out for the site, as it is not the first time that people have drowned and lost their lives in this river.
"We have young children here and the street is the only place to play, there are no facilities, no park or anything. Even if you tell a child not to go near the river, they still go in because they are young and sometimes, they want to experiment," she said.
Joburg EMS spokesman Robert Mulaudzi applauded his team for a job well done in recovering the body.
"We managed to recover the young boy after we called off the search yesterday after three hours of searching when the incident occurred due to the risk of injuries to our rescuers," Mulaudzi said.
He said that the search resumed on Wednesday, 15 November, at 8am and is happy to announce that they recovered the body. The body will be handed over to the South African Police Service for further investigations.
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“The message we want to send to the residents is that we have been receiving a lot of rainfall in Joburg in the past few days, and most of our river streams water levels are much higher. Residents who mostly reside along river streams like the Junkskei Klipvalley, we want to encourage them to continue looking after the young ones to stay away from the river streams,” he added.
The residents alleged that there is a snake in the river that kills people for bloodshed purposes; Mulaudzi said that he and his diving team have never seen such.
Police spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Mavela Masondo told Daily Sun that police have opened an enquiry for further investigations.
