Johannesburg - Sandra Mabule was watching news on TV in the evening when she heard about the horrific accident involving a minibus taxi and a truck that claimed the lives of 15 people.
It was already dark on Friday and her mother and sister, who had gone to buy groceries in Randfontein, had not returned.
When she couldn’t reach them on their phones, a panic-stricken Mabule then phoned her brother, asking him to take her and other relatives to hospital. Anxiety turned into fear when, upon arriving at Leratong Hospital in Kagiso, near Krugersdorp, they were told to go to the mortuary.
There they were referred to Randfontein police station, where their worst fears were confirmed. Mabule’s mother and sister, Thandi, 46, and Elisa, 31, were among the people who died in the crash.
On Monday, there was a sombre mood on Vetula Street in Swaneville Block 9 as residents spoke in hushed voices about the accident that claimed four people in the same street.
Apart from Mabule’s mother and sister, Phumla Mbhele and Absalom Mkhize also died in Friday's horrific accident on the R41.
The taxi was allegedly overtaking the truck when the accident occurred. The truck driver was among those killed, while his passenger was critical in hospital. A passenger in the taxi was recovering in hospital.
On Monday, Mabule recounted to The Star the pain of losing her mother and sister.
“I just knew something had gone terribly wrong when my mother and sister had not returned by nightfall. I panicked and called my brother and asked him to take us to the hospital,” she said.
Her mother and sister had been in a jovial mood on Friday as they left to shop for groceries in Randfontein around 9am. They even called around 11am, saying they had finished their shopping, Mabule said.
“They were upbeat, saying they would be home soon. It was their way of saying goodbye,” she said.
Mabule added that when they arrived at Leratong Hospital, they couldn't find the pair. “They told us to go to the mortuary. There they told us to go to a police station. We were hoping and praying that nothing bad had happened to them.
“But when we got to Randfontein police station, that’s when we lost all the hope… when police showed us pictures of the deceased. I saw the pictures of my mother and sister… It was so painful, I just wished they would say it’s a mistake. We were all shattered.”
Mabule and her four siblings said they were still in shock and would only believe that their mother and sister were dead when they officially identify their bodies at the mortuary tomorrow.
Elisa’s two daughters, Fikile, 16, and Ntombizodwa, 12, were visibly sad as the family spoke about their mother’s death.
Metres from the Mabule home, two other families were also mourning the deaths of their loves ones. Absalom Mkhize, who worked as a plumber, had been accompanied by a neighbour’s daughter to buy plumbing material when they met their untimely death.
Mkhize had been hired to do the plumbing job for the neighbour, and Mbhele was going to help him to buy all the required building material.
Congregants and mourners sang hymns as they tried to comfort the bereaved families.
But Mkhize’s daugher, Hloniphile, was inconsolable. She cried as she described what a loving person her father was. “He made sure we were taken good care of. I will miss him. He was everything to me and my family,” she said.
A few kilometres from Mkhize’s family, Henry Monageng sat with his family, mourning his dead mother, Minah. He said he missed her cooking the most. “If she was here, the house would be full of a good smells from her delicious dishes. She loved cooking,” he said.
Like some of the dead passengers, she had gone to do grocery shopping.
Henry said that while on his way home around 5pm, he had heard people talking in a taxi about the accident that left 15 people dead. He never thought his mother was among them.
On Saturday, Monageng went to the police station with his uncle and described her mother to the police officers who were at the scene. “I told them she had a red BlackBerry.
“They said we must call the cellphone and it rang inside a bag belonging to the deceased that had not been identified by their families. Then I knew I will never see my mother again,” he said.
Gauteng Safety MEC Sizakele Nkosi-Malobane met local taxi associations, in the aftermath of the fatal crash. She and Premier David Makhura also visited the bereaved.
The MEC said she was extremely concerned about the behaviour of taxi drivers on the road. Makhura issued a stern warning to public transport operators, saying they should observe the rules of the road.
Other fatalities
Several people died in other horrific road accidents outside Gauteng over the weekend.
On Monday morning, two people died in a collision between two vehicles near the Kendal/Balmoral off-ramp on the N12 near Witbank in Mpumalanga.
Paramedics arrived on the scene to find a car on its roof.
The driver had sustained fatal injuries, ER24 spokesman Pieter Rossouw said.
In another accident Monday morning, two people were killed and three others injured when their car rolled several times on the N1 between the Brighton Road and Okavango Road off-ramps in Kraaifontein, Cape Town.
“One of the vehicle’s tyres allegedly burst, which led to the driver losing control of the vehicle. The vehicle rolled several times,” said Rossouw.
When ER24 paramedics arrived on the scene, they found that two people had been ejected from the car, and they were declared dead on the scene, he added.
On Saturday night, two children under the age of 12 and a woman were killed and several other people critically injured in a minibus taxi crash on the N12, about 10km from Potchefstroom, in the direction of Klerksdorp.
The Star
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