Thabang Mahlangu sustained third degree burns all over his body, including his face, legs and arm. Passers by and other members of the public discovered him sitting on steps and screaming for help at about 06:00.<\/p>\n
The electricity shock surged through his body and miraculously did not kill him.<\/p>\n
According to the Steve Tshwete Municipality the accident was directly linked to a power failure that affected consumers in Kanonkop, Middelburg CBD and Dennesig and returned about three hours later.<\/p>\n
When paramedics arrived on the scene they immediately put him on a stretcher and he was rushed to hospital for treatment.<\/p>\n
He was still receiving medical attention at the Middelburg Provincial Hospital at the time of going to print on Monday morning and his condition was described as stable.<\/p>\n
It is unclear what the man was doing in the vicinity of the substation during the time of the accident and Police were unable to confirm if the man was being investigated for cable theft.<\/p>\n
The Steve Tshwete Municipality described the incident in a statement as “vandalism by unauthorized access”.<\/p>\n
yaseen@mobserver.co.za<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thabang Mahlangu sustained third degree burns all over his body, including his face, legs and arm. Passers by and other members of the public discovered him sitting on steps and screaming for help at about 06:00. The electricity shock surged through his body and miraculously did not kill him. According to the Steve Tshwete Municipality …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2844,"featured_media":7017,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"A man was shocked by a 88kV cable early on Saturday morning at the Lang substation on SADC Street, located behind the Exact Store.","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2885,7,8,2],"tags":[908,907,906,909],"class_list":["post-7016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-crime-news","category-local-news","category-local-municipal-news","category-news-headlines","tag-electricity-thieves","tag-man-shocked","tag-reason-for-power-failure","tag-third-degree-burns"],"category_labels":{"Category":"News","SubCategory":"Crime News"},"tag_labels":["electricity thieves","man shocked","reason for power failure","third degree burns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}