Government is apathetic about lethal Pongola road route, say residents

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Residents from Pongola, a small town on the far north coast of KwaZulu-Natal, say road accidents involving trucks — many of them causing deaths — have become a daily occurence on the N2, even though they have “pleaded” with authorities to take control of the situation.  

On Friday, a truck overtaking another truck collided with a bakkie carrying school children outside Pongola, killing 20 people — 18 children and two adults. Initially the death toll was announced as 21, however this was revised to 20 on Monday when it was announced that a corpse was “counted twice”. 

Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula is awaiting the accident report of the horrific crash, according to his office. 

Lwaphesheya Khoza, the spokesperson for the minister, told the Mail & Guardian that the report is expected on Wednesday afternoon or early Thursday morning. 

“[The] minister will be giving his remarks briefly after that,” said Khoza. 

The driver of the truck, 28-year-old Sibusiso Siyaya, was arrested for the crash, and according to the spokesperson for the National Prosecuting Authority in the province, Natasha Kara, appeared in the Pongola magistrate’s court on charges of culpable homicide. 

Pongola residents claim accidents of this kind are frequent, and that government has been informed about the dangerous route, which is dominated by long-haul and articulated trucks. 

Mbalula did not respond to a direct enquiry from M&G about being made aware of the notorious stretch of road.  

According to Pongola resident Adrian Chaning-Pearce, the 420-kilometre N2 route between Ermelo in Mpumalanga, and Richards Bay in KwaZulu-Natal, is known as the “coal run”, and is the shortest option to transport coal to the port of Richards Bay for export. 

“Due to the increase in the demand of coal and destruction of the railway system, we had an exponential increase in the number of trucks, specifically side tipper trucks on our roads,” Chaning-Pearce told M&G. 

He said that many of the drivers did not have valid driver’s licences and regularly disobeyed the rules of the road. 

Even before the fatal accident on Friday, a community Facebook group was established to create awareness about the dangerous N2 route. 

On 5 September, a concerned member of the group posted that she and her husband counted at least 70 trucks that had passed Pongola on the N2. 

During the first hour, 72 trucks passed, the second hour saw 153 trucks and the third recorded 137 trucks, totalling 362 trucks in three hours between 6am and 9am.

Another resident, Jabu Hansen, had in 2019 already started pleading for an end to reckless truck driving in the area via Twitter, and tagged Mbalula, the provincial government, and the Road Traffic Management Corporation. 

In his most recent plea on the micro-blogging site on 26 August this year, Hansen addressed Mbalula, saying: “Trucks are killing us on the Pongola N2, no traffic cops manning this route except local traffic cops when trucks get to town. We request your urgent intervention.” 

Hansen said his pleas “fell on deaf ears” and that “not enough” is being done by government to secure safe routes. 

“People are dying, almost every day there is an accident involving trucks,” he said. 

On 22 December last year, while releasing the provisional festive season statistics, Mbalula said: “We are seriously concerned about the high number of major crashes, where five or more people perish in a single incident.”

Mbalula continued: “We have seen a 142% spike in crashes with multiple fatalities, resulting in 17 such crashes so far this year compared to seven over the same period. The number of fatalities from major crashes also increased from 34 last year to 111 this year.”