Bridge convictions welcomed
Stone throwing not tolerated
THE murder convictions of three stonethrowing teenagers, whose actions caused the death of a car passenger on the N3, have been welcomed by provincial transport authorities as a historic judgment.
It would send a strong message to others who caused havoc on South Africa’s roads, spokesman for the KwaZuluNatal Department of Transport, Kwanele Ncalane, has said.
“The incident was uncalled for and it endangered the lives of road users,” he said this week.
On Friday the Daily News reported that Lucky Leon Khumalo and Brandon Phillip, both 18, and a 17-year-old who hurled stones from the Candella Road bridge were convicted of murder after a concrete slab flung by one of them killed Siphesihle Zola Zuma, who had been travelling in a car below on the N3.
Zuma had been sitting in the front seat of her friend Gertrude Mankaba’s MercedesBenz in November 2010 when the slab smashed through the windscreen and hit her.
She was taken to St Augustine’s Hospital where she later died.
Dealing with such crimes would have to begin with road users respecting life, said Ncalane.
“Immediately when you throw stones on to a road where cars are in motion you endanger the lives of others.”
But the department has been criticised by at least one victim of a bridge stone-throwing incident for not doing enough to prevent such attacks.
Six months ago Vishanie Rabindranath and her husband Doon, of Chatsworth, were heading for Sibaya Casino on the N2 when one of two rocks smashed through their windscreen, hitting the left side of her face.
The impact shattered her lower jaw, knocking out some of her teeth and a day later she received 15 stitches.
She had surgery in August to mend her broken jaw and in October another operation followed as the first one had been unsuccessful.
Next month Rabindranath, 43, will have the special plate that was used to reconstruct her jaw removed, but she still needed to go to hospital every fortnight to have her injuries checked.
Responsibility
“No arrests have been made in connection with my case,” she told the Daily News.
Rabindranath said the Transport Department could be doing more to curb such incidents – or take responsibility for them.
“Why don’t they secure the bridges so that people can’t throw things off them,” she said. “They should fence bridges now. If they had done this earlier maybe this wouldn’t have happened to me.”
Ncalane said his department was looking at ways of reducing incidents of rock throwing from bridges, but would not be drawn into providing details.
“These kind of crimes were not something that was happening frequently in the province; obviously we were taken by surprise,” he said. “Once ways to curb these crimes have been finalised, they will be made public.”
Rabindranath said she was happy that Zuma’s family had some form of closure.
“At least justice was done; it must have been a huge loss to the family to have such a young life taken from them,” she said.
Zuma’s father Vukile, who had forgiven the teens responsible for his daughter’s death, said he saw no need for the department to waste taxpayers’ money securing bridges. The money could be put to better use developing the province, he said.
Avoided
“The concrete slab that was thrown had been there as a result of some construction on the bridge and no one could have avoided that… or foreseen what was going to happen,” he said.
In October last year the Daily News reported that night vision cameras and a protective screen were to be installed on a bridge on the N2 near uMhlanga, in a bid to nab rock throwers whose actions have caused death and destruction.
The new monitoring system for the Blackburn pedestrian bridge had been proposed by national roads agency, Sanral.
A Sanral engineer, Kersen Naidoo, said this week the agency would now improve on the pilot project.
“We are now in the process of designing an enhanced system using two cameras with motion detection video analytics to monitor the span of the bridge deck,” he said. “We hope to have this enhanced system up and running within two to three months.”