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A heavy pall of sorrow descended over Ekosini village in Limpopo yesterday, August 16, 2025, as the Mahlangu family gathered to bury four loved ones who met a heartbreaking end in the Delfie Quarry Dam in Pienaarsport, Tshwane, just two weeks earlier on August 3.
The victims—51-year-old Poppy Mahlangu, her 36-year-old daughter Nontokozo Mahlangu, and her sons Galase Mahlangu, 32, and Sizwe Mahlangu, 17—were in the midst of a traditional cleansing ritual when the waters turned deadly, according to police reports.
In a chilling detail, the family’s seven-year-old girl—the youngest among them—stood by as a horrified witness. She wasn’t participating in the ceremony and bolted home to alert others after seeing her mother and siblings disappear under the surface.
Rescue teams scrambled to the site, where the bodies of Poppy and Nontokozo soon floated up. But the dam’s treacherous depths forced a halt in the search for the brothers that day. “Police divers returned on Monday morning and managed to retrieve the remaining bodies after a 40-minute dive,” Gauteng police spokesperson Colonel Mavela Masondo told us.
An inquest has been opened at the Boschkop police station, with investigations still underway to piece together the full story.
The funeral drew Elias Motsoaledi Local Municipality Mayor Councillor David Tladi, who came to extend his sympathies amid the raw emotion of the service.
Adding to the tragedy, these family members were close kin to the late Chief Maphepha II. They’d ventured to the dam for a cleansing prayer ahead of his own funeral—a ritual meant for renewal that instead claimed their lives, leaving a community in mourning and a little girl with memories no child should carry.
