2 kids die in hut blaze as mum 'romps' with boyfriend

TWO children from Tsholotsho were burnt beyond recognition after a fire gutted a room they were sleeping in while their mother was allegedly having a tryst with a boyfriend. The incident, which happened in the early hours of Saturday in Dikili Village, about 42 kilometres from Tsholotsho Centre, saw property worth tens of thousands of dollars reduced to ashes.

Villagers identified the victims as Mbekezeli Dube, 7, and Nomalanga Dube, 1. Forget Ndlovu, 24, the mother of the children, told The Chronicle she had gone to fetch water at a borehole, about 300 metres from the homestead and returned to find the bedroom hut burnt down.

"I left my children sleeping and returned to find villagers retrieving bodies from the hut," she said adding that she did not know how the fire started.

Ndlovu, from Zhombe, is a domestic worker at the homestead whose owners are based in South Africa. Villagers told reporters they suspect Ndlovu had left the children sleeping as she went to visit a boyfriend. "The borehole is near her homestead. She would have noticed the fire before the children died if she was telling the truth.

"Besides, no one saw her at the borehole," said a villager who declined to be named. Khethiwe Tshuma, a neighbour, said her granddaughter woke her up saying there was a fire at the next homestead. "I rushed out to see flames shooting from my neighbour's hut, about 200 metres away. I called other neighbours including the village head and we rushed there.

"As we approached the gate, the roof caved in amid a shower of sparks. The door, made of galvanised iron sheets, was glowing red with heat, showing that the fire had already been raging for a long period," said Tshuma, adding that villagers could not touch the door so they grabbed logs and destroyed the walls to get to people who could have been trapped inside.

Tshuma said efforts to put out the fire were futile as it had already consumed everything in the hut. "We were convinced that the kids and their mother were all inside since the door was locked and it was early morning," said Tshuma. She said she would never forget the horror of finding the children's charred bodies.

"The body of the older child, a boy, was among the ashes of the bed. The little girl seemed to have crawled to the door and her stomach had burst open, leaving her intestines splattered on the floor," Tshuma said. Village head Mtshumayeli Tshuma said it was clear Ndlovu had left her children unattended for a very long time.

"That room was full of property and for all of it to burn to ashes before the mother was back means she had been away for quite some time," he said. "We suspect either foul play or the mother had left a candle on and gone somewhere, although she isn't saying." The area's councillor, Patrick Ngwenya, said the bodies were taken to Bulawayo for postmortem.

He said villagers wanted police to investigate the matter further. "We all have hundreds of questions running through our minds and want further investigations to be carried out on the matter. "It's difficult to understand how one goes to a nearby borehole only to come back when her house and children have been burnt. I suspect this fire could have been raging for a long time before villagers discovered it," Ngwenya said. He said the Tsholotsho Rural District Council had sent a formal request for a fire tender as fires continued to wreak havoc in the district.