Meeting my mother’s killer is a waste of time
THE son of a woman killed in a traffic accident simply wants to “move forward” and is content justice has been served. The driver of the taxi that killed his mother was jailed for an effective seven years last week.
Vusimuzi Mbanjwa, 21, whose mother was one of 15 people killed in a 2013 taxi accident near eMkhomazi, said that if he had lost his mother, Mantombi, to a crime that was more intentional, like murder, he would want to meet the perpetrator “man to man”.
“But to meet (the taxi driver) would be a waste of my time,” said the 21-year-old Mangosuthu University of Technology instrumentation engineering student.
Mbanjwa is set on furthering his education and career and wants to “move forward” in all aspects of his life.
He was studying electrical engineering at the University of KwaZulu-Natal when he received a call with the devastating news of the death of his mother, minutes before writing first-year exams.
Mbanjwa is mostly content with the seven-year jail sentence a Scottburgh magistrate handed down to Gcina Langa last week for culpable homicide, driving an unroadworthy vehicle, and drunken driving.
He does, however, feel that perhaps Langa should also have been ordered to do community service in some way related to the taxi industry “to make sure problems like this don’t happen again”.
The accident, which saw Langa’s taxi plough into a stationary truck on Sappi property, along with the Field’s Hill crash in 2012 in which 24 people died, are among the province’s worst accidents in recent years.
Prison
Families of Field’s Hill victims have met with driver Sanele May in prison. May received widespread sympathy from the public. Gregory Govender, the owner of the truck he drove is before court facing four charges relating to operating an unroadworthy vehicle‚ failure to ensure public safety by giving maintenance responsibilities to unqualified persons, as well as employing an illegal foreigner and failing to do a proper background check.
Langa received seven years for culpable homicide and one year for the other charges, to run concurrently, much to the anger of South Africans Against Drunk Driving (Sadd) founder Caro Smit. Smit said sentences should be harsher for professional drivers. She also said any jail term should run consecutively and not concurrently.
“Victims don’t have a voice and it is our responsibility as an advocacy group to give them this voice,” said Smit. “Public transport is their only option and therefore it should be safe and reliable.
“Sadd asks that alcohol ignition interlocks be made compulsory in all taxis and buses to prevent multiple deaths and injuries of vulnerable commuters.”
Private accident reconstruction expert Craig Proctor-Parker, who investigated both cases, said the word “accident” often took the emphasis off the severity of road accident crimes.
He believed road accidents were in many cases crimes and should be classified as such.
“The word ‘accident’ softens it,” he said
All over the world, the word “crash” had been adopted increasingly, but this too had a different perception from words like “murder”, which involved intent.
However, vehicle accidents were often not without human error, such as vehicle unroadworthiness and drunken driving, he said.
Meanwhile Mbanjwa said he was deeply concerned about children left without their breadwinners after such accidents.
He said payouts should go towards bursaries for their education to avoid such money being used for things like caregivers building new houses.
“Education is their future,” said the six-As matriculant from Sidelile High School, whose dream has always been to be the first qualified electrical engineer to come out of eMagbheni township, near eMkhomazi.
Having been at university on a corporate bursary, Mbanjwa switched to relying on funding from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme for his studies at MUT.
“My mother was a cleaner. When I was younger I told her I liked machines. She said to me, you will be an engineer ‘ ngani wami’ (my child).
“I worked hard to make her proud and I believe that she is still seeing what I am doing.”