The mother of a 20-month-old boy who drowned in the Klip River in Soweto recalled her frantic search for him after she heard that there were children who had been swept away.

Luleka Tyasi, 43, said she left her son Athini Bokveld at a neighbour's house along Dlamini Road at Freedom Charter Square in Kliptown on Friday after he cried because he wanted to play with other children.

Tyasi, a mother of seven, said: "He wanted to play. I left him because there was an elder at that house.

"They were playing in the house. The door and the gate were closed."

She said she arrived at her shack from a nearby shopping centre and "I went out to look for my child where I left him but he was not there. I searched all the passages around here but I couldn't find him.

"Someone told me that there were children playing in the river and I went there to look for him, but I was told that he had been swept away by the river.

"I was devastated."

Athini's father Zinikele Bokveld said he was shattered.

Bokveld, 49, said he had just knocked off from work in Mpumalanga when he was told that his son had drowned.

"They called my colleague. He sat me down and explained what happened.

"I immediately changed my clothes and left for Joburg," Bokveld said.

"I arrived four hours later and the house was full of people. It is very difficult for us," he said.

Bokveld said he had a close relationship with his son.

"He was a quiet child who loved to play. Every time I come home he would leave his mother and come to me.

"We were always together," he said.

Bokveld said the police promised him that they would search for his son's body until they found it.

Police spokesman Captain Hitler Ngwenya said the boy went to the stream with three other children.

"Four children were swimming in the Klip River. Two of them went into the water," Ngwenya said.

"A man who was passing by managed to grab one of the children.

"The other went with the water. The children were unsupervised."