A Grade 5 pupil at the Tshiluwi Primary School is lying in a hospital bed, suffering excruciating pain from burns she sustained when her home was set alight during the night of 23 March at Tshituni-tsha-fhasi in Nzhelele.

Tebogo Mpai (12) sustained extreme burn wounds when her aunt’s five-room house was allegedly set alight at about 04:00. The aunt, Tshifhiwa Sebola (31), said that three other family members had been inside the house with her - Ouma Sebola (29), Wayne Mpai (9) and Mpho Sebola (5) - as well as Tebogo, when they smelled petrol in the house.

“We were all in my bedroom, except for Tebogo, who was sleeping alone in the next room,” said a grief-stricken Tshifhiwa.“I had just finished speaking on the phone when my younger sister, Ouma, hinted that there was a smell of petrol coming from the passage. Soon after there was a sound which went ‘gong!’”

Tshifhiwa then rose from her bed and poked her head out the door to look at the dining room. She noticed a blazing fire rushing towards her along the passage from the dining room and immediately alerted all the family members inside her room to start dashing out of the windows.
“We finally managed to break a window to Tebogo’s room from outside and dragged her out,” Tshifhiwa explained. “We brought her to an open soccer ground outside our home and waited for an ambulance to arrive.”

Tshifhiwa, a cleaner at Biaba, suspects that her ex-lover might know something about the fire, which consumed all her belongings and property, including furniture, utensils, clothes, food and ID books and birth certificates. “I had a protection order against him, but he would always come to my house, using force,” she tells. “When I told the police that he was entering my house without my permission, they would say I shouldn’t worry about him as long as he was doing me no harm.”

Mphephu police’s spokesperson W/O Lazarus Netshidzati said the police were investigating a case of arson and five counts of attempted murder. “We haven’t made any arrests yet,” Netshidzati said. “But we hope to establish more information, which will then lead us to arrest the suspect or suspects.”

Tshiluwi Primary School’s principal, Ms Doris Rankhododo, mentioned that the young Tebogo was in a lot of pain. She said the girl was a top achiever in school who had won numerous awards. “She’s the cream of our school,” she said. Rankhododo said that the school would continue to visit Tebogo at the hospital and support her family materially since they now had nowhere else to stay.