Thando Ngcobo | When children drown in South Africa’s broken sanitation system

Police in Limpopo have opened an inquest docket to determine the circumstances surrounding the death of a 6-year-old girl who was found floating in a pit toilet.

Last Friday, a six-year-old child went missing in the rural village of Nkuzana in Limpopo and by the time she was found, the search had already turned desperate.

Her body was discovered inside a pit latrine, the kind still used daily by thousands of families across South Africa.

While police opened an inquest, another family began preparing for a funeral.
In the days that followed, shock gave way to a familiar and heavier realisation. For many South Africans, particularly those living in rural provinces, this was not an unthinkable tragedy but a grimly recognisable one.

A child had died in a toilet, again.

Authorities confirmed that the matter is under investigation, a response echoed in similar cases over the years.

But what remains beyond dispute is that pit latrines, especially those that are poorly built, uncovered or left to deteriorate, are known to pose a serious risk to children

This has been acknowledged repeatedly by engineers, public health experts, human rights organisations and the government itself.

The danger is not new. The warnings have been issued for years. Yet in 2026, children are still dying this way.

For more than a decade, pit latrines have featured in some of South Africa’s most painful stories of infrastructure failure.

In Limpopo in particular, these deaths have followed a disturbing pattern. Each incident sparks public outrage, urgent statements from officials and renewed promises that unsafe toilets will be eradicated. Each time, deadlines are announced. Each time, they are missed.

In 2018, government auditors under the Sanitation Appropriate for Education (SAFE) Initiative identified 3,372 schools still using unsafe pit toilets. The Department of Basic Education set a target of 31 March 2025 to eliminate these facilities.

By March 2025, the DBE said it had replaced more than 93 % of identified toilets, and by April the figure had risen to 96 %, leaving 141 schools with unsafe toilets.

Officials conceded that the 31 March 2025 deadline was not fully met and set a new goal to complete the remaining work by July 2025.

Civil society groups have noted that the DBE has been promising pit latrine eradication since at least 2016, repeatedly missing self-imposed deadlines.

Pit latrines become especially dangerous when basic safety standards are not met. Unstable structures, missing slabs, wide openings and the absence of protective barriers significantly increase the risk of fatal accidents.

For young children, whose bodies are smaller and whose awareness of danger is still developing, these conditions can turn a daily necessity into a deadly trap.

These risks are well documented. Their persistence raises a more uncomfortable question, not whether such deaths are preventable, but why prevention has failed so consistently.

Limpopo’s rural communities continue to carry the heaviest burden of this failure.
Vast distances, strained local governments, and uneven service delivery have left many villages dependent on sanitation systems that would be unacceptable elsewhere in the country.

In wealthier areas, toilets are places of privacy and hygiene. In poorer ones, they can become sites of mourning.

Despite the recurrence of these tragedies, there is no comprehensive public record of how many children have died after falling into pit latrines nationwide.

Cases surface through local news reports, community alerts or social media posts, often only after deaths have occurred. There is no centralised public database tracking these incidents, and no official accounting that reflects the true scale of the problem.

In the absence of reliable data, accountability becomes easier to avoid.
After the funeral, families are left to grieve largely on their own. Inquests may be opened, but consequences are rare. Infrastructure projects are announced, but progress is often slow or invisible.

The cycle repeats: tragedy, outrage, silence.

The six-year-old girl who died in Limpopo last Friday is now part of a long and painful list.