A desperate Eastern Cape mother allegedly used rat poison to kill herself and three of her four children on Sunday. The police said their preliminary investigation found that the family was desperately poor and the mother had become despondent. This is the second case of its kind in the Eastern Cape in just over a month.

On Sunday, 10 September, Ntombizanele Mntizela (35) fetched her four children from their grandmother's house in Luzuphu village near Lusikisiki "to pray". She then took them to a nearby forest and forced them to take "tank pills", a deadly rat poison sold on the streets of the Eastern Cape for between R5 and R15.

Three of the four children and their mother died.

The children's bodies were found on Monday morning. On Tuesday, a search and rescue team recovered Ntombizanele's body where it lay in thick bush. It is understood she also poisoned herself.

Family spokesperson Lamleka Sikhunjwana said one of the children, an 11-year-old, had survived by playing dead.

"The child said their mother took them to the forest on Sunday night and poisoned and killed her three siblings, but she pretended to be dead and managed to escape," Sikhunjwana said.

"That child was not okay. All she told us was that her mother tried to kill her and killed her siblings," she said.

She said the child managed to get to a neighbour's house at around 6am on Monday.

"She was taken to the St Elizabeth Hospital in Lusikisiki and is still in a critical condition," Sikhunjwana said....