Government in the dock after boy drowns in pit toilet
Updated | By Pieter van der Merwe
Section27 is set to argue before the High Court in Polokwane that government failed a Grade 1 learner who fell into a pit toilet at his school in 2014 and drowned.
![KZN Department of education](https://turntable.kagiso.io/images/hammer.width-800.width-800.width-800.jpg)
A three-week-long court case is set to get underway on Monday in an attempt to secure justice for the family of a Grade 1 Limpopo learner who died in 2014.
Michael Komape's body was discovered in a dilapidated pit toilet after he "suffocated and drowned in other humans' waste" at the Mahlodumela Primary School, near Polokwane.
The case between Section27 and the Minister of Basic Education, as well as the provincial education department, will be heard in the Polokwane High Court.
The organisation says it will argue in court that the school and government's failure to prevent the five-year-old's death also violated his parents' rights.
"When parents send their children to school each day we have a right to expect that the school will protect our children and always act in their best interests," Section27 says in a statement.
Section27 believes the school violated Komape's "rights to dignity, life and safety and security of person".
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