'We suffocated for a long time', South Africa nightclub survivor says
A patron who was present as 21 young people mysteriously died at a local nightclub in the early hours of Sunday morning in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province has shed more light on what happened at the scene. Authorities said, at 4am on Sunday, the local police station received several frantic phone calls from people about the incident at Enyobeni Tavern in Scenery Park, a working-class community in East London city.
Matafeni got out, but at least 21 teenagers died inside the club, according to police, setting off grief and confusion across the country. The police minister, Bheki Cele, broke down sobbing in front of an East London mortuary as he addressed media there Sunday morning. “You have heard the story that they are young, but when you see them, you realize that is a disaster,” he told a local news station Sunday. “When you look at their faces, you realize that we are dealing with kids. The youngest victim, he said, was 13. South Africa’s official drinking age is 18 but is often not enforced.
*Sinethemba, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, said she and a few of her friends were present when the bar started to fill up that morning. The 17-year-old, a class 12 student at a local high school, told Al Jazeera that they attended the party because they were informed that two local soap opera “celebrities” would be hosting it. The young woman had waited for her parents to go to sleep before sneaking out and claimed that when the nightclub became too overcrowded, people were asked to leave. When the partygoers did not comply, one of the security guards closed the door and began spraying a substance into the crowd, she said.
“The man at the door, I think he was a bouncer, he closed the door and we couldn’t breathe. We suffocated for a long time and [were] pushing each other but there was no use because some people were dying,” she said. “It smelled like gas. I’m not sure if it was tear gas or pepper spray. Then some people died and I also fell asleep for three hours. Then when they woke us up, they also thought I was dead,” she continued.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/27/we-suffocated-for-a-long-time-s-africa-nightclub-survivor-says
