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A survivor of the horror bus crash in the Eastern Cape, Nandipha Dadlana, can’t believe she is alive.
The bus, en route to Butterworth, veered off the road and plunged 300m down an embankment, killing 25 people and injuring 68.
Speaking from her hospital bed at Tafalofefe Hospital, 5km from where the accident happened, 47-year-old Dadlana – who broke her left leg – said by the time she got into the bus it was already full.
“There were people standing. The bus was going at a very high speed. We were shouting at the driver to slow down. We were not even familiar with the driver. He was not the one who usually drives us.”
The passengers were mainly from Chebe and Lusizini villages in Centane. The bus was about 40km from Butterworth when the accident happened.
“A few kilometres after I got on the bus the driver seemed to lose control and the bus veered off the road and started rolling down the embankment. People were flung out of the bus.
“When the bus finally stopped at the bottom I realised I had broken my leg and there was pain in my back. People were screaming. Some were shouting for help, others were dead silent,” she said.
The company that owns the bus has apologised.
Nomsa Samente, Amathole regional director for Africa’s Best 350, said she did not want to discuss who should be blamed for the horrific crash because investigations were still under way.
“We are very sorry about everyone who lost their lives in this tragedy. We are all over the place now trying to see how we can help ease the pain. Some of us are in hospitals where the survivors are so that we can help them with the paperwork.
“We are in deep pain about the people who lost their lives in our bus because our buses are the main buses that carry people from their homes to town and back home,” Samente told City Press.
She said this was “not the time to play the blame game”.
“At this moment I cannot say we should take the blame as the bus company or that the government should take the blame for not building proper roads.
“Let us wait for the investigation so we can see what happened. And the bus driver died and cannot defend himself,” she said.
Samente was adamant that the bus was not overloaded despite many survivors claiming that it was. She said the bus had 65 people seated and 10 other passengers [also adults] standing.
Samente said she was not sure of the number of small children and infants on the bus because they did not have to buy a ticket so weren’t counted as passengers.
“With the babies we cannot say it was overloaded because we do not even issue a ticket for a small child of two or three years old. We don’t count them. So, the bus was not overloaded.”
Samente said she was confident that the bus was roadworthy because the buses went for road checks every six months.
She could not confirm whether the bus in question had missed roadworthy checks or had been serviced.
Samente said she found it hard to believe that the bus was speeding because the accident happened just after the bus had driven over a hill.
“You cannot be speeding on a hill even when driving your own car. How can you be at top speed on the top of the hill?”
She said it was “speculation”.
“Passengers can say anything, including that the bus was speeding because they were hurt, which I am very sorry about. Some lost their people but at the same time it is also very bad for us. The whole company feels very bad. This hit us on the head. We are very uncomfortable about it,” said Samente.
This was not the first time an Africa’s Best 350 bus had a serious accident. In 2015 a bus crashed into a bridge, killing 37 people.
Unathi Binqose, the spokesperson for the Eastern Cape transport department, said investigators were examining the bus to check its roadworthiness.
“The sense that they are getting is that the bus was in good condition. They have done a thorough check but this is provisional. And all indications are that it might have been a human factor that contributed to this accident. But, unfortunately, the driver is not around to answer for himself,” he said.
Binqose said the question of overloading could be a contributing factor.
“There are some questions about the road. But on that stretch, there are no gorges. The road is straight and the surface is good ... The witness accounts pointed to the issue of speeding and those are the things that our investigators have got to take a thorough look at.”
Binqose confirmed that the bus was certified to carry 65 people.
“The issue of the overloading ... we cannot run away from it. We had in excess of 90 people stuffed into that bus when the accident happened. When you talk of 25 who died and 68 who were hospitalised it means there were more than 90 people inside the bus,” Binqose said.
A list of the deceased, seen by City Press, showed that the youngest was a three-year-old boy who was airlifted from the scene and died on the way to hospital. The eldest was an 88-year-old man.
Binqose said a mass funeral would be held on Friday.
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