Four children have died after they consumed a toxic substance at a dump site in Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape, police said on Tuesday morning.

Police spokesperson Capt Andre Beetge said the children, aged between three and 11, were playing close to their homes when they ate food found between the rubble.

“Some rumours about chips and cheese were doing the rounds, but police will only be able to get a better idea of the cause of death once post mortems and forensic tests have been conducted,” Beetge said.

The incident happened after 6pm on Monday.

The children were identified as Alunamda Mqawu, 3, Zintle Mqawu, 10, Alizwa Rhwayibana, 5, and Asive Rhwayibana, 11

A boy, Asiphile Grootboom, 7, survived after receiving treatment.

An inquest docket had been opened.

“A stern warning has also been given to the community in the area not to consume anything found on rubbish dump sites,” Beetge said.

Stage 6 load-shedding, which has happened once, looks set to become a far more common occurrence as Eskom’s plant breakdowns remain at dangerously high levels.

Stage 6 means 6,000MW are dropped from the grid to avoid the system becoming unstable. In Gauteng, where load-shedding intervals last four hours, Eskom customers could be without electricity for an average of 10 hours a day.

At the weekend, Eskom implemented stage 2 load-shedding, dropping 2,000MW from the grid. But had demand been at normal levels, with everyone back at work, it would have been necessary to move to stage 6 on Saturday and Sunday.

Demand over the holiday period is about 4,000MW lower than normal.

Chris Yelland is MD at EE Business Intelligence, which tracks demand and Eskom plant performance, said that in the last week of January 2018 electricity demand was at 28,864MW. In the last week of December demand had dropped as low as 25,294MW.

Eskom said plant breakdowns must be limited to 9,500MW of capacity if it is to avoid load-shedding. Over the past two weeks breakdowns have been substantially higher, reaching 14,096MW on Friday. Monday’s breakdowns stood at 13,119MW at 6am.

Despite efforts by Eskom management to turn operations around over the past two years, the energy availability factor — the percentage of its plant that is available to dispatch energy — has continued its downward trend. In 2019, Eskom’s energy availability factor was 67%, said Yelland. This compared with 72% in 2018 and 79% in 2017.

The last two weeks of December saw the energy availability factor hit 59.7% and 58% respectively.

A 35-year-old man was in a critical condition after being bitten by a snake near the Hartbeesspruit River in Kameeldrift on Monday, paramedics said.

Netcare 911 spokesperson Shawn Herbst said the man was bitten on the knee by a rinkhals.

Herbst said he was in a serious condition after suffering the effects of a cytotoxic bite.

He was provided with manual ventilation to assist him with breathing and then transported to hospital.

The wait is over for former Independent Examination Board (IEB) pupils. They received their Grade 12 results at midnight on Monday.

Twitter has been flooded with reactions from young achievers, who shared their impressive results.

The IEB’s class of 2019 recorded a 98.82% pass rate. Of this, 89.51% received bachelor’s passes, which allows them to study towards a degree, 7.91% qualified for entry towards diploma studies and 1.4% achieved entry for study at a

ongratulating the former pupils, tweeps gave tips on how to navigate through the university registration process, with some dishing out words of advice for those who did not get the results they had anticipated.

Here’s a glimpse into the reactions:

Proud achievers Never encourage your kids to aim for 30% “pass”. You are not doing them a favour in this brutally competitive cut throat world of employment. And you are the one who’s going to sit at home with a jobless unemployable child. Strive for excellence to the best of your ability