Talk:Enyobeni Tavern disaster

Latest comment: 7 months ago by 41.114.216.237 in topic Proposed renaming

Proposed renaming edit

The article name "East London, Eastern Cape tavern disaster" seems lengthy. I'd like to suggest a renaming of this article, perhaps to "East London tavern disaster"? elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 17:01, 26 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

It was there originally, but someone thought it was confusing against London, England. The current name, with the tavern name, is even better than both of those so we should be good for a title now. Pikavoom Talk 05:45, 27 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
I've boldly moved it from disaster to deaths, as disaster is extremely vague. BilledMammal (talk) 09:50, 27 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
Not sure that makes it any less vague, but the whole incident is vague. You'd expect them to have a cause of death by now, but it's still being investigated and media reports are not definitive either way. Pikavoom Talk 10:53, 27 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
I've restored the original title of "East London tavern disaster", which is also the "status quo" as the first non-stub title. This seems the most decriptive and best at the moment. That said I have also inserted 2022 per WP:NCE.  — Amakuru (talk) 13:33, 27 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
Ok that's a great idea 41.114.216.237 (talk) 06:56, 27 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Location edit

I have removed the coordinates, which pointed to a totally different nightclub in the area. The Facebook page for Enyobeni Tavern gives its address as 37219 scenery park phase 1, East London, South Africa, which I believe means that it is on 37th Road (or Street). The streets are not laid out in any order I can see, so I hope that another editor can find the place. Abductive (reasoning) 08:51, 27 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

africtionary.com link edit

This link is being repeatedly readded by @Pitsraz:. In my opinion Wikipedia shouldn't link to outside dictionary sites without a good reason, and I don't see a good reason to link here. There must be a guideline about this, but these kind of links are usually just not done. Pikavoom Talk 15:54, 27 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Blocked. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 16:47, 27 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

Requested move 28 June 2022 edit

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. For clarity (especially to avoid confusion with East London in the UK), concision, and consistency with other crowd disaster articles. (closed by non-admin page mover)Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 21:05, 5 July 2022 (UTC)Reply


2022 East London tavern disasterEnyobeni Tavern disasterWP:NOYEAR. East London is England so people would be confused. Dunutubble (talk) (Contributions) 01:39, 28 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

It can only be a crush. Presumably the owner has the protection of corrupt local authorities and a criminal syndicate, how else do we explain the strange lack of arrests? Also, the word "disaster" is neutral on cause. Abductive (reasoning) 06:42, 29 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
Latest reporting is saying it may have been carbon monoxide poisoning, not a crush. - htonl (talk) 10:12, 29 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
Is "Abductive Reasoning" a synonym for "jumping to conclusions"? Captainllama (talk) 22:36, 30 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
  • Support: Better than the current title. A lot of convincing examples cited here by Dunutubble and others. --MZMcBride (talk) 10:05, 29 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
  • Support: I understand the concerns, but (as mentioned above) Dunutubble and others have provided some good examples in favour of this move. —QueenofBithynia (talk) 11:40, 29 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per nom and others. Urban Versis 32KB(talk | contribs) 16:42, 29 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per nom. Definitely a lot of confusion to be had and has already occurred Mebigrouxboy (talk) 00:53, 30 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per WP:CONSISTENT Captainllama (talk) 22:35, 30 June 2022 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose for now, and review when an alternative word to "disaster" has a consensus. The year is important, location is clear from the opening line of the article. BobKilcoyne (talk) 02:36, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
Well but the point of a good title is so you don't *have* to start reading the article to figure out what it's about. Herostratus (talk) 10:32, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per WP:CONSISTENT. LefcentrerightDiscuss 12:01, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose I would have to say at this point. Here is some actual date: according to Google Trends, there's been an upsurge in googles of both "East London" and "Enyobeni", but East London's uptick is both greater and steeper. This is preliminary data. But if it holds, it would show that at least in our time, more people are looking for info on the event by googling a phrase containing "East London". This might suggest that we should hold off on any name change for the moment.
Another thing is, East London is not some cowtown. It has a metro population of 750,000 and is a famous city and port. It's certainly what I think of first when I hear the term "East London". I am familiar with the term "East End" (of London), mainly from the song, but that's different. I don't know if the city of East London is large enough to be known mononymously like Kansas City or Tallinn or Durban etc, but maybe. (It is true tho that the eastern half of London is our primary topic for searches on "East London", and if that's not a mistake it is a data point for making the change to avoid confusion).
For my part, I had never heard the term "Enyobeni" til I came to this thread, I had seen the headlines as just referring to some club in East London. Maybe that's just me, but the Goggle Trends data seems to indicate I'm not alone. If the editors advocating a name change can say the opposite -- that news of the event coming across their desks led with the name of the club before the city -- that'd be different. Can you?
Our rules are to aid, not bamboozle, the reader. Which do you think would be true of more readers: searching for material on this event, they see "2022 East London tavern disaster" and don't quickly realize it's (what they know of as the) Enyobeni disaster, or they see "Enyobeni Tavern disaster" and don't quickly realize that its (what they know of as the) East London disaster? If we're not sure it's the former maybe we should hold off. Herostratus (talk) 14:01, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
That's simply because of the influence of Wikipedia and the current title. Abductive (reasoning) 21:00, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
Uh, that's extreeeeeemely dubious, and even if this was true, so what? We don't be like "Sure, this is the common term, but only because of influence from NBC and CBS"? Or the Times or the Wikipedia or anything else. It doesn't matter. Herostratus (talk) 03:53, 3 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
Support More in line with the articles on List of human stampedes and crushes, and would help clear up confusion about whether the tavern is in London, England. 66.165.1.180 (talk) 21:45, 2 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
  • alt support to "2022 Enyobeni Tavern disaster". East London is definitely confusing with eastern part of London, England. We should add the year to make it consistent with other mass death articles (shootings, stampedes, disasters, et al). —usernamekiran (talk) 20:39, 4 July 2022 (UTC)Reply


The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

What is normal in South Africa for public release of information? edit

It has been five full days now since the night of the tragedy. 24 bodies have been taken and examined by the standard medical examiner/coroner offices of South Africa; conceivably with much medical knowledge now known by those offices of the government. Being not from South Africa (but a visitor there), am wondering if this slow release of information to the public after a multiple-death incident is normal in South Africa. Is this standard? Is it unusual?

Seems like this delay/slow public info release might helpfully be a topic for the Wikipedia article to cover/mention. Perhaps even something like: "Five days after the tragedy, no causes of death have been publicly released by South African medical examiner authorities, as is normal for multiple death cases in the country." ... or, something else if this delay is unusual. N2e (talk) 00:27, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

If it is unusual, notable neutral sources will say so, and then we can quote or paraphrase them. I'm not sure there are enough events like this for there to be a "usual". Herostratus (talk) 10:28, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
I understand that this particular case there is an actually a bit of a mystery and disagreement between officials on what caused this. If this was some kind of poisoning, that's something that could take a long time to investigate without an obvious source of poison. Pikavoom Talk 10:32, 1 July 2022 (UTC)Reply
This seems to be symptomatic of a bigger problem. The Boksburg Explosion seems to be in the memory hole as well. Park3r (talk) 03:28, 14 April 2023 (UTC)Reply

Teenagers or people? edit

In an edit teenagers have been changed to people in the lead. In my opinion teenagers or children is more informative than people. As in Throb nightclub disaster, the victims here were all young people and most sources covering the disaster are describing the victims in this way and there are also sources on parenting and how to prevent young people from sneaking out to clubs as well as sources on underage drinking. Pikavoom Talk 07:58, 2 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Nyala edit

There is, in the investigation section, the following:

A police RG-12 (Nyala: a type of armored vehicle)

I feel like the parenthetical note might be a machine-translated passage from a non-English source perhaps? The use of the non-English “Nyala” is confusing to me here and I wonder whether it needs to be translated or perhaps the whole parenthetical removed since a reader could simply follow (or even hover over) the link for an explanation of the term RG-12. D A Hosek (talk) 03:48, 4 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Nyala is used in South African English. Initially it was Nyala with RG-12 in the parenthetical, I will switch it back. Pikavoom Talk 06:43, 4 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Three months on: still no definitive cause of death from the "investigation" edit

Today is 26 September, three months after the tragic incident at the Enyobeni Tavern. The article still does not reflect any definitive cause of death from the "investigation" by South African government authorities.

Is this because something is wrong with the government? Cover up? They just still haven't gotten around to running diagnostic tests on the blood and bodies of the deceased? Is is just politically expedient for mass death investigations to work this way in South Africa? Something else?

Or is this something missing in Wikipedia? Where no editor has located the various reliable sources that cover the publicly-released results of the South African government and their medical examiners/coroners? ... then used that public info to improve the article? N2e (talk) 11:52, 26 September 2022 (UTC)Reply