CHILD (7) BURNS AS SOLDIER’S HOUSE PETROL-BOMBED

BUHLENI – It is a miracle that Dumisile Maseko the wife to soldier Polycarp Maseko and her child aged seven are still alive.

Polycarp’s house was also targeted by arsonists who threw a petrol bomb inside. He was not at home at the time but his wife was around. On the same night, a house belonging to a warder was also petrol-bombed. These incidents happened at a time when junior officers at His Majesty’s Correctional Services (HMCS) and Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS) are at loggerheads with their superiors over non-implementation of phase II of salary increments.

According to Dumisile, she was asleep at around 3am when she heard what sounded like footsteps outside the house.
She said she was not bothered about it because she assumed that it was cattle that usually roamed freely around the homestead. However, little did she knew that she was only a few seconds away between a life or death situation.
It turned out that the footsteps she had heard were of people about to burn her and her child alive. Dumisile said she then heard a window breaking and saw a bright light. It was a petrol bomb. She said the petrol bomb hit at the back of a cupboard and then she realised that they were being attacked.

Kill

She also decried that whoever threw the petrol bomb into the house was trying to kill the people inside. The soldier’s wife said she quickly picked up a bucket that had been  used for urinating and threw the urine into the fire. She said this put out the fire on the curtain but some of the petrol had splashed on other parts of the house. Dumisile said in the process, her child was burnt in the hand. She said as she prepared to get out of the house with the child, another petrol bomb was thrown in, but despite breaking through the window, it did not go off.

She said this was a miracle because had it exploded, she would have been burnt alive together with her child. Dumisile said she would have not been able to put out the second petrol bomb fire if it had exploded. She said as they managed to manoeuvre out of the room they were in, only then they realised that the lounge was also on fire. “I was now convinced that we were under attack and were going to die in those flames,” she said. She said she was not sure why her home was targeted but did not rule out that this was because her husband was a soldier.

“They view him as Mangololo and nowadays one is harmed for having a differing opinion from others,” she said sombrely. Mangololo is a term used to describe someone who is pro the current system of government.

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