When a neighbour carried little Chumani Mdayi out of the bush, his anguished mother could barely look at her son as she already felt that he had died.

The terrible moment was the culmination of a frantic race from the Kingstown shack near Despatch where Nthombizanele Mdayi and her children lived, into the bush where Chuma’s friend said they had been playing when Chuma, 8, fell down...