The Sunday Mail
A breeze as cold as death slowly sweeps across Rusape as huge dark clouds, preparing to shed a tear, form above the town.
Residents gather in small groups, their heads bowed reverently and hands folded behind their backs.
Cold, wet weather is normal in this part of Zimbabwe in November. But on this particular November 8, 2018 morning, the cold and wet spell mirrors the mood.
At 5.30pm the previous evening, a horrific accident claimed 46 lives about five kilometers from Rusape.
Approaching the town in the aftermath of the catastrophe is soul-draining. The sombre atmosphere is palpable and the whistling wind sounds like a dirge.
At Rusape General Hospital, Memory Chimanga – who has just arrived from Waterfalls, Harare – paces restlessly.
“My husband has just gone into the mortuary to identify his body,” she says distraughtly. “My brother-in-law (Douglas Chamanga) had travelled to Rusape after one of his friends who is in South Africa had asked him to take groceries to his family.
“I last spoke to him on Wednesday morning on my way to work and he told me he was travelling to Rusape later in the afternoon.
“He then sent me a message saying he had visited my daughter, who was in hospital, and was now on his way to Rusape.”
It was the last message she received from him.
“When I saw the accident on ZTV news at 8pm, we started calling him, but his phone was ringing and he was not answering. This morning we continued calling until it was answered by a policeman who told us to come to Rusape.”
Moments later, her husband emerges from the mortuary, his head lowered and his eyes pregnant with unshed tears.
He confirms the worst to the family, and the wailing begins. Scores of people around them bow their heads.
They too are waiting for confirmation of the unthinkable.
Reckless drivers
Survivors from both buses accuse the drivers of speeding.
Cosmas Marembo, the driver of the Smart Express bus, handed himself over to the police and is accused of encroaching into the lane of the oncoming Bolt Cutter bus – and doing so in a prohibited zone that is well-marked with solid white lines restricting vehicles to their lanes.
Moreover, Marembo was allegedly using his phone while driving.
“I was seated on the fourth seat from the door and he kept telling someone over the phone to wait for him as he would be in Marondera by 6pm,” says survivor Talkmore Mutize.
“He was trying to overtake a haulage truck and a Toyota Wish and he had not seen the bus coming from the opposite direction, which was also speeding.”
President Emmerson Mnangagwa has declared the accident a state of disaster, and criticised the behaviour of drivers and bus operators who sacrifice passenger safety for profit.
The regularity with which these accidents, oft attributable to human error and flagrant disregard of road rules, is worrying.
The carnage is staggering.
In June 2017, 43 people died along the Harare-Chirundu road after a speeding bus driver failed to negotiate a curve.
In August 2018, 13 people died when a commuter omnibus going towards Kadoma made a sudden about-turn in front of an oncoming bus.
According to the Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe, 1 838 deaths were recorded in 2017 due to road accidents; and as of March 2018, the number of people killed had risen by 31 percent compared to the same period last year.
Unsurprisingly, the TSCZ report blames bad drivers – not bad roads – as the main cause of traffic accidents.
The TSCZ also indicated that road crashes increased by 24 percent from 33 136 recorded between the January to August period last year to 41 155 this year. Fatalities in the same period rose to 1 483 from 1173 in the same period a year ago.
And this comes at a heavy economic cost. Losses from road traffic accidents are estimated at $400 million annually.
This doesn’t include serious injuries and the psychological trauma suffered by accident victims.
“A dark cloud is hanging over the country right now following the horrendous bus crash which happened near Rusape,” says TSCZ managing director Mr Obio Chinyere.
“This should not have happened as initial investigations seem to suggest human error as the cause of the accident.
“Government is doing its best to rehabilitate the roads but unfortunately because the good state of the road, people tend to ‘over-speed’, which is the major cause of most accidents in the country.”
Heavy penalties
If Finance and Economic Development Minister Prof Mthuli Ncube was hesitant about rolling out his mooted stiffer penalties for road traffic offenders, his hand might be strengthened by the recent disaster.
Although the local standard scale of fines were last reviewed in February 2017, Government believes that they are still not deterrent enough.
If the proposals carried in Government’s economic blueprint, the Transitional Stabilisation Programme, are carried in the 2019 National Budget, traffic offenders will have to pay a pound of flesh for their transgressions.
For speeding, offenders will have to fork out $1 500 from the current $300, while negligent driving by commuter omnibus or heavy vehicle drivers – a practice that is now commonplace in most cities – will attract $5 000, up from $700. Motorists driving under the influence of alcohol will be slapped with a hefty $4 500.
But will this be deterrent enough?
Debate is raging in South Africa on the need for punitive measures for road traffic offenders.
The Southern African country’s Road Traffic Management Corp (RTMC) is pushing for punitive action for driving under influence, speeding, reckless or negligent driving.
The RTMC wants UDI to be classified under the Criminal Procedures Act and for the offence to be moved from schedule two to a schedule five offence.
This means the offence will be treated the same way as rape, murder, theft and fraud.
Viewed only as statistics, road carnage might be dispassionate, but homing in the personal human tragedies brings humanity closer to the toll society pays.
Last week in Rusape, scores of Zimbabweans lost a father, a mother, a brother, a sister, a lover, a son or a daughter.
Their lives will never be the same again.
