Minister had premonition about accidents

JUST hours before his death, Minister of Public Service and Administration Collins Chabane warned his colleagues to avoid long distance driving due to the high risk of being involved in road accidents.

Chabane himself was killed in a horrific road accident on the N1 South between Mokopane and Polokwane in the early hours of yesterday.

A few hours earlier, he had warned mourners at the funeral service of homeland leader Samuel Nxumalo at Magona village outside Malamulele about the dangers of taking the long drive from Limpopo to Cape Town.

He said Nxumalo and another homeland leader, the late Amos Zitha, used to drive from Cape Town to Limpopo instead of flying. He said when he asked them why they didn’t use an aeroplane, they told him they used the time to travel on the road to discuss issues.

“I told them they should not do so again because of many road accidents,” Chabane told mourners.

He said not so long after that, he received a call that Nxumalo was involved in an accident.

He said Nxumalo had slept while driving, and police who found him got his (Chabane’s) phone numbers on his notebook.

In the wake of Chabane’s death yesterday, residents of his home vil- lage at Xikundu, near Malamulele, were shocked.

Local chief John Xikundu said: “What has happened is very bad. We were still expecting a lot from him, but maybe taking him so early was what God wanted.”

Xikundu said he always demanded development from Chabane as a minister and they generally got on very well. “We are family, and in the Vanwanati clan we were brothers,” he said.

He said everyone at Xikundu is devastated after the death of their icon. People at the local Presbyterian Church, of which he was a member, were overwhelmed and most did not even go to church.

Also shocked were Chabane’s for- mer classmates at Shingwedzi High School, who had started a WhatsApp chat group to plan for a reunion that was set for June.

Chabane and his Zimbabwean friend Basil Makombe were to perform for free during the function. “The man was a genius,” said one of his former classmates, who was also organising the reunion.

“He used to play a teacher [in class] in the absence of teachers,” said the former classmate.

One of his homeboys is former Levubu-Shingwedzi Transitional Local Council mayor Rodwell Mashaba, who said yesterday: “We will remember him as a humble and disciplined cadre of the ANC. I feel like I have lost a blood brother.”