Father tells of family’s narrow escape after elephant topples car
AN MTUNZINI father said he prayed earnestly for the well-being of his two young children and wife while they were trapped in the car that an elephant bull toppled over a few times in the isimangaliso Game Park last Sunday.
Mathias Wessels feared he, his wife Amanda, a medical doctor, and their children, Michaela, 7, and Samuel, 9, would be crushed to death by the might of the animal on the Cape Vidal Road.
It started as an easy Sunday morning drive for the family, who were looking forward to a dip at Cape Vidal until their encounter with the elephant at about 10am.
Wessels said they were “extremely afraid” at the time of the incident, and the children were still coming to terms with the near-death elephant encounter.
After showing “who’s the boss” the animal, lumbered away from the scene.
“To come out of that with minor cuts and bruises was a miracle. I was praying while the car was flipping. I believe that’s how we got out relatively unscathed,” said Wessels.
Nearly 20 seconds of the family’s ordeal was captured on camera by the occupants of another vehicle. That video has since been circulated widely.
While the elephant toyed with Wessels’ Ford Everest, a female onlooker was heard saying to a man over the sound of their car’s blaring hooter “put it in reverse and be ready to move”.
The man asked her to phone someone. When the woman noticed the animal had turned the car onto its roof, she let out an exasperated gasp and instructed the man to “go” before telling him she didn’t know who to phone.
Wessel, a businessman, said they visited Cape Vidal beach often.
“Our objective was to swim and do some snorkelling. The elephant was the first animal we saw along the way and it was alone in a grassland area,” he said.
He noticed the animal had come towards the road and the other car was ahead of them.
Both vehicles slowly reversed.
It is believed that the occupants of the other vehicle filmed the video.
The animal kept coming.
By then Wessels decide to reverse on the opposite side of the road and he eventually stopped when the elephant was about 50m away.
The other car continued to reverse. Before they knew it, the elephant appeared at the passenger side and shoved its tusks through the window, and toppled the car onto its side.
Wessels said what was not seen in the video was how the elephant turned the vehicle once again onto its side, before walking away.
“I managed to unbuckle myself, but I noticed he was coming back towards the car. I was worried he would now crush the vehicle. That was the most scary part of the whole ordeal,” he said.
The animal turned and moved away. “I managed to put my head out of the car and saw a Land Rover. I called out to them to come closer so I could get the kids out,” which he was able to do.
“The elephant trumpeted once as it turned the vehicle over, but it didn’t look like it was in a state of rage, and it didn’t charge either,“he said.
To Wessel, the animal seemed like “a big boy toying around”.
“It probably wanted to show who’s boss. When it rocked the vehicle, you could see it wasn’t battling to topple the car,” he said.
“I wonder what would have happened if we had been in a smaller car?”
The driver of the Land Rover, Neil Abbott and his wife, Charmaine, noticed the other vehicle moving in reverse.
“Once I saw their reverse lights, I knew there were elephants about,” said Abbott, who lives nearby in St Lucia.
Abbott said he didn’t see the elephant pushing Wessels’ car over, but to the animal it was probably like playing with a football on a Sunday morning.
“The elephant looked bored. I think he was in musth because he had a bit of drizzle down the side of his face.
“I have been on this road many times… I understand them. Sometimes young bulls like to show off when they have a bit of hair on their chest,” he said.
Greg Martindale, a director at Conservation Outcomes, an organisation supporting biodiversity conservation outside traditional protected areas, said there were reasons why the incident occurred.
Martindale said that elephants would go into musth, leading to behavioural changes because of the hormonal change. The other times elephants could become aggressive was when someone was in their space or they had an injury.
He believed that it was more likely the elephant was in musth, and it would have had visible seepage from temporal glands on the side of its head.
Martindale said he didn’t think the family did anything reckless.
“They were very fortunate,” he said. isimangaliso’s spokesperson, Bheki Manzini, said their officials responded to the incident and rescued the family, and they appreciated that the family sustained no severe injuries.
“Although such incidents are not common in isimangaliso, we wish to caution visitors to remain vigilant and keep to a distance of at least 50m from wildlife, particularly the Big Five. Human-wildlife conflicts can, and do happen, since these animals are wild and roaming freely in the park,” he said.
Manzini said, following their management’s investigation of the incident, no action would be taken against the elephant.