As the families of 17 people who died in a horrific crash on the N1 highway in Limpopo were trying to make sense of the tragedy, authorities pointed fingers at each other over road safety.
National and provincial roads and traffic authorities on Wednesday passed the buck on the perilous state of the road which some have described as being prone to fatal crashes.
On Tuesday, 17 people died, with Limpopo spokesperson for transport and community safety Mike Maringa saying some were burnt beyond recognition, when a Toyota SUV and a 22-seater minibus taxi collided head-on near the Mookgophong off-ramp.
Maringa said the taxi was overloaded as it had 25 people on board. The taxi left Pretoria's Bosman taxi rank carrying passengers going to Mokopane and Modimolle.
The stretch of road near the Mookgophong on-ramp from the Polokwane side is largely flat with two lanes in each direction, it only gets steep on the southern side of the small town before going downhill.
Asked whether the department has any plans in improving safety on that stretch of road, transport minister Fikile Mbalula on Wednesday said: “There are a lot of accidents on the roads. My agenda is to fix the roads well, repair them to acceptable standards and we expect provinces to do the same,” Mbalula said.
Maringa said there was a lot of police visibility on the stretch of road between Modimolle (south) and Mokopane (north) with police and traffic officers deployed on a daily basis.
“Anyone who frequently travels on that stretch of road can tell you that visibility is extremely high, especially the stretch from Mabopane to Polokwane and from Polokwane to Musina.
“The challenge with the road in terms of safety measures is that the road itself belongs to Sanral [the SA National Roads Agency] and about four years ago, Sanral made an undertaking to either split the road or make a barrier in terms of the lanes. The best people to speak to would be Sanral or the minister himself,” Maringa said.
Sanral spokesperson Vusi Mona said: “We’re responsible for 22,000km of road and we can’t know everything that’s happened on every 1,000km. Please send written questions.”
He then asked Sowetan to send a written media query which had not responded to the query at the time of going to print.
Road Traffic Management Corporation spokesperson Simon Zwane would not be drawn into giving a figure of how many people had died on the stretch of highway in the past four weeks.
Zwane referred Sowetan back to Maringa regarding police visibility.
Maringa said out of nine people that were admitted, seven have been released.
Local police said before Tuesday's horrific crash, a man lost his life in another accident on the same stretch of road when his Isuzu bakkie overturned after a tyre burst, a police source said on Wednesday.
Police in Mookgophong told Sowetan on Wednesday that they respond to at least 1 crash a week and they were all related to speeding.
“It's worse on the other side of the mountain because motorists hit the hill at high speed and struggle to control their cars when the road goes downhill,” he said.
When Sowetan arrived at the accident scene, there were pieces of clothing, scattered broken glass and burn marks on the tarred surface.
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– Additional reporting by Peter Ramothwala
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