Durban - A missing 3-year-old uMlazi boy has been found dead with a live electrical cable between his toes after he stepped on the wire while fetching his ball that had rolled between two shacks.
Banele Gumede had been staying with his aunt in Zamani, near the Isipingo water treatment works, when he disappeared on Wednesday morning. He was last seen playing outside the house.
His father, Sandile Khwela, said they had searched until midnight on Wednesday and continued searching from dawn on Thursday.
A man living below Banele’s aunts home noticed a sandal between the shacks and notified the father who had been searching the nearby swamps.
Between the homes are wooden poles with overhead electrical cables. A resident had illegally connected a wire to the overhead cables and run the wire down between the shacks.
Banele was found at 8am on Thursday face down between the houses.
Zethu Gumede, the boy’s aunt, said it appeared Banele went to fetch his soccer ball when he stepped on the live wire. He did not reach the soccer ball which was a metre away from where he died. The wire was still live and stuck between his toes. His foot was burnt.
“When I came closer to the sandal I saw my son lying face down. I picked him up thinking he was alive. I felt the electrical surge and dropped him. Smoke was coming out from places where the wire touched water. One of the residents disconnected the wire and we removed him,” Khwela said.
The father said they had not had money for creche fees for the week so he had left his son with the boy’s aunt.
Khwela who lives in Malukazi across the road from Zamani, works part time in Reunion. The boy’s parents at first thought Banele had walked home and had been frantically searching the route between the two areas.
Disgruntled residents, who knew the person that had connected the wire, were angry because he had not buried the wires underground.
Police spokesman, Major Thulani Zwane, said an inquest docket had been opened at uMlazi police station.
eThekwini Municipality spokeswoman, Tozi Mthethwa, said Zamani was one of the areas noted by the city as an illegal electricity connection hot spot. She said there had been numerous weekly operations, to remove illegal connections, only to be reconnected by residents.
“We continuously warn residents against cable and electricity theft as it often results in devastating and tragic consequences, such as loss of life. There is also damage to infrastructure costing the municipality about R230 million annually,” Mthethwa said.
eThekwini mayor James Nxumalo expressed his deepest condolences to the family of the child.
“The life of an innocent child has been lost because of this criminal act. This must be viewed as a lesson that illegal electricity connections are bad for the economy and a hazard to the lives of the people who reside in these communities.”
Other incidents were people have been electrocuted because of illegal connections and exposed cables:
* January - Princess Ntuli, 37, was electrocuted in Intshawini, near Stanger. Ntuli was walking barefoot with a bucket of water on her head when she came into contact with low hanging live wires.
* January - Nontobeko Mjoli, 5, of the Jika Joe informal settlement in Pietermaritzburg stepped on an exposed live wire and was killed. In 2013 Aviwe Vava, 6, died while visiting her parents in the same area when she slipped and grabbed a live wire in an attempt to break her fall.
* February - Barefooted Mhlengi Bright Hlophe, 5, and Bafana Mtshali, 17, died at the Chiltern Drive informal settlement in Shallcross when they stepped on live wires in two separate incidents.
* April - A prized pregnant Arabian horse that had been grazing on a Hazelmere farm, north of Durban, was electrocuted by an exposed cable. The cable had been dug up by thieves.
Daily News