A FREE State mother is in total shock after finding her seven-year-old son strangled in a shack in Soweto.

A FREE State mother is in total shock after finding her seven-year-old son strangled in a shack in Soweto.

Emily Thoote received a cellphone text message from her ex-boyfriend on Friday saying he had left her a "parcel" in the shack.

The 29-year-old mother went to the shack in Protea South, Soweto, and received the shock of her life.

The "parcel" was the body of her son Tshepiso.

"It was nothing I would have imagined," Thoote said.

The former boyfriend, 29, was arrested in the Free State on Saturday night.

"I cannot believe what he did to me. He hurt me so such that I will carry this pain for the rest of my life," she said.

Thoote said she and her relatives found her son's body hidden between the mattress and the base of the bed in the shack.

"I was so shocked that I could not look at him. The elders told me that he might have been strangled because there were marks on his neck. They also suspected that he was raped," she said.

Thoote, from Botshabelo, Free State, said she broke up with the man from Tweespruit, also in the Free State, in September last year.

She said the man wanted her to take him back. When she refused he allegedly started to make threats.

"He told me last week that he would do something that would cause me pain for the rest of my life. He did exactly what he said he would do," she said.

"I can't believe he killed my only son just to get at me. This is the worst thing you can do to a mother. I can't cope. I am from a doctor as we speak. It is hard to accept it," she said.

Thoote and her son were visiting relatives in Protea Glen, Soweto, when the Grade 2 pupil at Monokutswai Primary School in Free State went missing on Friday.

Warrant-officer Kay Makhubela said the man was expected to appear in the Protea magistrate's court today.