Gauteng police have opened a case of negligent handling of a firearm following reports that late Isibaya actor Andile Gumbi's four-year-old son shot himself over the weekend.

"Cases of failure to safeguard a firearm and negligent handling of a firearm have been opened against the owner of the firearm after the four-year-old boy allegedly shot himself in the lower body," said police spokesperson Capt Mavela Masondo.

According to Masondo, at around 10.50pm on Sunday, a 35-year-old man was with the boy and his mother when he left his firearm in a bag on the TV cabinet before going outside to his vehicle.

"He heard a gunshot going off inside the house. It is then that they realised that the boy allegedly shot himself in the lower body when he was handling the firearm that he took out of the bag," said Masondo.

He said the boy was recovering in hospital.

"A case was opened and a docket taken to the senior public prosecutor for a decision. No arrests have been made so far."

The Daily Sun reported that Gumbi's mother Phindile was "shattered" by the incident. According to the newspaper, the child's mother Hlengiwe Ngcongo had taken him from Phindile days before the incident.

Ngcongo called Phindile late on Sunday night to tell her that something bad had happened to the child.

"She claimed he was carrying the boyfriend’s bag, dropped it by mistake and the gun went off. But why was the gun not in a safe? I don’t know what to say to Hlengiwe, but thank God the boy is alive and now stable," Phindile was quoted as saying.

Gumbi died in October after suffering a heart attack in Israel.