I’m writing in response to an article I read in the paper on a bumpy little plane home from
Nonhlanhla Nkwane was employed as a domestic worker for Lebo M: Grammy award-winning producer and composer (though actors who've worked for him say he's not a great guy to work for). The story goes that she thought she’d been given a lucky break but only a few days into the job, which entailed domestic chores like cleaning and ironing, tragedy struck. Lebo’s one year old son drowned in the pool and now, the newspaper tells us, poor Nonhlanhla has been charged with culpable homicide.
The courts heard that while Nonhlanhla ironed, little Thembalethu made his way to the pool where he was later found floating. Here are some other alleged facts (no cause for a defamation case here!), which might help you see why I’m so outraged: 21 year-old Nonhlanhla had been hired to do housework, not as a child minder. Where was the childminder? She been taken by Lebo’s now ex-wife, to an audition! For the Lion King! Produced by Lebo! But wasn't there a safety net around the pool? No, there was no net. There was no fence. And the sliding door to the pool: left wide open.
It is every parents worst nightmare but in this case many questions beg answering. Is it reasonable, as I think the judge obviously believed, to expect that a domestic worker act as childminder too? Did the childminder get the role in Lion King? And if someone is going down for negligence in this terrible case, I don’t see why it’s Nonhlanhla when it was the parents who never took the most obvious safety precautions.
Like the Murder Mystery game which we played the other night, when Don McClue announces who's guilty of the crime, everyone tries to work out how they got it so wrong, how all the clues pointed to one thing but the announcement was another...
1 comment:
that is awful, she cannot be held responsible for what happening.
Post a Comment