“My only prayer right now is to find my son’s body. There is no way that he could come out of this 1.8m-deep hole alive.”

A sense of anguish, hopelessness and defeat is written all over the face of Kholekile Magadla as he stands metres away from the uncovered manhole that is believed to have swallowed his six-year-old son, Khayalethu, on Sunday afternoon. Magadla shivers in disbelief as he and his community of Dlamini, Soweto, watch rescue operations for Khayalethu on Monday...