Durban - Inanda man Cleopas Mahlangu, 61, lost his five sons and a 10-year-old granddaughter in a head-on collision on the N2 last week. He buried them all on Sunday.
Their deaths form part of the 2015/2016 festive season road death toll statistics – 1 755 lives lost.
Although KwaZulu-Natal contributed the highest number of victims to that figure – with an average of seven people dying on each of the 42 days under review – it was also the only province which showed a decrease in road fatalities compared with the same period last year.
For Mahlangu, the etched memory is that he could not reach any of his sons on their cellphones that night.
The driver of the car
was Melusi Mahlangu, 37. The passengers were his daughter, Mbali, as well as Mbonisi Dlamini, 26, Mthokozisi Dlamini, 24, Sibusiso Dlamini, 26, and Nkosinathi Dludla, 36.
They all died after the car veered across the centre median on the N2 South near eMkhomazi (Umkomaas) and slammed into an oncoming truck.
Netcare 911 said they were trapped in the mangled car, which landed 50m from the point of impact, and died at the scene. The paramedics reported being called to the scene at about 10.30pm on Sunday.
On Tuesday Mahlangu said he had been trying to phone his sons at about that time, his alarm growing as each of their phones went to voicemail.
Mahlangu barely slept that night, he said, and when he tuned into the first radio news bulletin at 6am, his worst fears were confirmed.
“The news said five people and a 10-year-old girl were killed in a car accident. I knew it was them, but I didn’t want it to be true.”
He woke another family member who had access to the internet and asked them to check the details. He said they had found a report about the crash, but the car in the photograph was so mangled, he could not make it out.
Panicked, he went next door to see if the story was on a 24-hour news channel. It was, and the car was shown more clearly.
It was the silver VW Polo which had left his yard with his sons in it the day before, when they had gone to fetch Mbali from her mother’s home in Port Shepstone.
“When they left I told them not to all go.
“Everyone knows there are a lot of car accidents during the festive season, so I asked Melusi to take only one of his brothers to drive when he got tired, but they were so close and were in such a festive mood, they would not part,” he said.
He was heartbroken at losing his granddaughter who had “barely lived. She was only going into Grade 4”.
The accident was one of 1 400 fatal crashes on South African roads between December 1 and Monday.
This was an increase of more than 10% compared with the same period last year.
These were just some of the alarming statistics of the festive season report released by Transport Minister Dipuo Peters in Pretoria on Tuesday.
Peters said cars accounted for almost half of the fatalities, with the majority of those who died being passengers. Almost 75% were men, mostly on weekends and mostly black, between 25 and 39, dying between 2pm and 11pm.
Peters said authorities could not sleep peacefully when thousands of road users had been “mowed down… We cannot have peace of mind when innocent children are left in… agony, permanent emotional and psychological torture while awaiting the arrival of their parents who will never make it home alive”.
KwaZulu-Natal’s MEC for Transport, Community Safety and Liaison, Willies Mchunu, has cautiously welcomed the decrease in road crashes and fatalities in the province, saying there had been a 2% decline in deaths.
But Mahlangu says all he can think about is spending his old age alone, forever mourning the lives of his boys and granddaughter.
“Motor vehicles”, he said, were “like bombs”.
“A gun, a knife – they kill one person at a time. A car – six people, six lives stubbed out just like that.
“I respect the road, no life should end like my children’s did, in the middle of nowhere through something which is avoidable.”
Daily News