19-year-old Thabang Makhoang drowned in university swimming pool

THE Higher Education Transformation Network (HETN) has urged North West University to publicise a report on the death of 19-year-old Thabang Makhoang.

This comes after Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande commissioned an independent team to investigate the matter.

HETN executive director Reginald Legoabe said it was important that the university takes action against the perpetrators of Makhoang's death.

Makhoang drowned in January this year during an event called the "fruit festival" on the Potchefstroom campus.

"We are concerned about the delay by the university to publish the results of the investigation.

"This seems to suggest attempts at withholding the truth," Legoabe said.

He said the university's management needs to take financial responsibility for the death of Makhoang and need to ensure that initiation, which is illegal, does not take place there again.

"Merely establishing a bursary fund and building a house for the victim's mother is not enough," he said.

According to the university Makhoang, a first-year engineering student, drowned in the university swimming pool during a fruit festival that was part of the introduction and orientation programme.

University spokesman Louis Jacobs said the institution could not publicise the report until the executive council had seen and reviewed it.

"We received the report only last week. Procedures have to be followed," Jacobs said.

"We cannot just publicise it to the public without the go-ahead of the university council."