A three-year-old boy was killed when he touched an illegally connected power cable in the Umbayi informal settlement in Tongaat, KZN, on Sunday morning.

Athokuhle Mthunywa told his parents he was going to the toilet but instead of returning home, started playing with other children.

“One of the children came running to us and said Mthunywa was holding an electricity cable. When I got there, I pulled him away and also felt a shock,” says the boy’s father, Simphiwe Nyembezi.

“His eyes were still open and his body warm. We rushed him to the Tongaat clinic, but a doctor confirmed my boy was dead.”

Hundreds of Umbayi informal settlement residents recently protested in Tongaat over the delivery delay of promised RDP housing.

One of the issues they raised is that they are forced to connect to electricity illegally, resulting in fatalities.

A five-year-old boy was killed in February last year when he touched an electricity wire that fell to the ground during a storm.

When the North Coast Courier visited the area last year, shallow trenches had been dug, passing underneath nearby houses’ fences to conceal the wires.

Mthunywa’s parents appealed to the community for help to transport their son’s body to the Eastern Cape, as they can’t afford to take him back home for the funeral.