The owner of the minibus taxi that caused an accident killing 14 children has described the moments immediately following the crash.
22-year-old Ayanda Dludla was caught on camera overtaking several cars before colliding head-on with the truck on Monday morning. 14 children were killed in the accident, with Dludla and a passenger surviving.
Dludla’s father, Jimmy Vinger, told The Sunday Times that his son called him moments after the crash and seemed disorientated.
Vinger, who is a pastor and deputy chair of Gauteng Education Transport Services, immediately began contacting the families of the children to deliver the terrible news.
He then made his way to the scene, where paramedics tried to save young lives while attending to those who had died.
“When I saw him at the scene, he looked like he had lost his mind. He was crying nonstop and apologising to me, saying, ‘I know you wanted to build a good future,’” describing Dludla as “cool and collected” and “a good boy”.
He said his son wanted to apologise to the families of the children.
‘Just imagine taking foil and covering a small body’
A paramedics, who spoke after the incident but was not on the scene, shared the heartbreak first responders would have felt when attending to the crash.
“When you see a child’s lifeless body, you also take it in as a mother and as a father. You forget that you are a paramedic because you are also a human being,” recounted one of the paramedics who said she was among those who responded to the crash site.
She said one of the hardest parts was covering the bodies of those who had died.
“Just imagine taking foil and covering a small body. Not one, not two, not three. And on top of that, you are also a parent.
“You are dealing with dead bodies and parents looking for their children [everywhere]”
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The mother of one of the children, Buhle Radebe, was among those who rushed to the scene. She was videoed crying at the scene. She told mourners at a service for her daughter and others that her anguish had been used for likes on social media.
“On Monday, I experienced something I cannot even explain. When I opened TikTok, I was called ‘the lady in red’. It broke my heart to see people turning our pain into content.”
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In court
Dludla appeared in the Vanderbijlpark Magistrate’s Court on Thursday. He is charged with 14 counts of murder, three counts of attempted murder, one count of driving without a valid Professional Driving Permit, and one count of driving an unlicensed motor vehicle.
He abandoned his bid for bail, as angry protesters outside the court shared their outrage at the crash and called for justice. They held placards reading: “Justice for the youg lives lost”. Also among the crowd was a local scholar transport organisation that maintained: “We are not killers, we love our kids”.
Still the image of Vinger’s taxi overtaking several vehicles to try get ahead of the traffic jam in front of it, was all too familiar for South Africans and a moment to share a collective frustration at reckless drivers, often carrying the most vulnerable in society.
Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy and her deputy, Mkhuleko Hlengwa, later instructed traffic law enforcement agencies, including the RTMC National Traffic Police, to intensify their law enforcement operations with a specific focus on scholar transport throughout the country.
“They have stressed the fact that these enforcement operations must intensify the focus on overloading, roadworthiness and speeding, all of which were central to saving lives in the previous year and over the festive season.
“They have also made a clarion call to the scholar transport operators as well as buses and taxi associations to get their act together or face the full might of the law,” said the minister’s spokesperson Collen Msibi.
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