The Chronicle

BULAWAYO, Thursday, May 9, 1968 — The South African show-jumping team in Rhodesia, two of whose members, Mr Gert Myburg and Mr Neil Roux, were killed on Tuesday when their car was in collision with a train in Que Que, will still compete in the international team event at the Salisbury Horse Show this week, officials in Johannesburg said yesterday.

The team, an unofficial one, but backed by the Transvaal Horse Show Association, was placed second to Rhodesia at the International Horse Show at the Trade Fair in Bulawayo last weekend.

Chef d’Equipe Leslie Taylor will probably fill one of the places – but no decision had been made early yesterday on the second replacement.

Both dead men lived in Johannesburg. Mr Roux was the only son of Mr and Mrs G J Roux of the farm Barbarita, north of the city, where they ran a riding school, and Mr Myburg was in the city where he ran a business with his father.

Mr Myburg was just 21, while Mr Roux would have turned 21 next month.

One thought put forward as to the cause of the accident is that the car driver thought that the train was being pulled when in fact it was being pushed.

An eye witness, an employee of Risco, was about to drive his car on to the main road from the Redcliff turnoff when, he has told police, he saw the car travelling very fast towards Que Que.

The flashing lights at the crossing were working and a shunting engine from Risco was pushing trucks towards the crossing with the leading truck very close to the road.

It is possible the car driver (it is not known who was driving), seeing the engine at the rear of the train, thought that it was pulling it and that the trucks had passed over the crossing.

It was as the car was actually on the crossing that the leading truck hit and mounted it, pushing it about 100 yards along the line.