Our sister newspaper the Sunday Times reports today that these dramatic scenes played out yesterday in parts of Mpumalanga and Limpopo, including the Kruger National Park, after a week of flooding.

By yesterday, the death toll stood at seven, while at least six people were still missing.

"Two other children, aged two and five, drowned in Lydenburg, while a 70-year-old man was killed when his mud hut collapsed and an elderly woman drowned when she was washed away by flash floods.

Rescue workers are also trying to find a car with four people that was swept off a bridge in Limpopo on Thursday night.

Karabo Mashego (10) drowned after he was swept away by a strong current in the Motlamugale river near Hoedspruit late on Friday.

He was walking with friends to his grandmother's home when they decided to take a quick bath in the river.

His friends heard him scream but stood by helplessly as he was swept away by the current, the Sunday Times reports.

Yesterday morning police divers searched the area while his distraught family stood watch on the river banks.

Said his grandmother, Joyce, while clutching his clothes: "We are hoping for a miracle. but if he is not alive, I just want his body to be found."

Fifteen minutes later police diver Warrant Officer Andre de Lange signalled that he had found Karabo.

As the young boy's family gathered around his body and prayed with police, De Lange said: "I feel sorry for the family. I am just relieved we found him.

"My job is done. The family can now have closure."

Mashego was in grade six at the Mamosodi Primary School in Bushbuckridge.

His uncle, Thapelo Mashego, says: "I never thought when he left on Friday it would be the last time we see him.

"He ate his bread and drank juice and then he left. We are devastated."

Joyce says: "I can't believe he has been taken from me. Why didn't God take me? He was everything to me. I struggled for years to raise him and now he is no more."

Around the same time nine students trapped on a game farm in Hoedspruit since Thursday were rescued. The group had booked into the Nchaba game farm last Sunday to celebrate a friend's birthday.

Chase Remmington (22), a student at the University of Cape Town, said they had been cut off from the outside world after three bridges leading to the farm were washed away.

"We had food, though supplies were running low. We spent our time playing board games such as Scrabble. It was tough being indoors for two-and-a-half days," he says.

Remmington says that yesterday morning they decided to drive as far as they could before walking 2km to an airstrip at another game lodge. It was here that they were spotted and picked up by a police helicopter.

The chairman of Farm Watch in Hoedspruit, Mike Scott, says a large-scale search and rescue operation was launched on Friday to locate the occupants of a car that was swept off a bridge.

"Bystanders reported that, on Thursday night, a white Golf came around the corner and over the bridge too fast and went off the bridge that was already overflowing with water," Scott says.

Yesterday the body of 18-year-old Message Nyathi was discovered close to where Mashego drowned and the search for 50-year-old Josias Ubisi continued. - Sunday Times