Sharp bends on SANDF bus crash route, says MEC

Free State police, roads, and transport MEC Butana Komphela told reporters at 3 Military Hospital in Bloemfontein that buses were, however, permitted on that “dangerous” road.

“They [the SANDF members] were fine. Big trucks carrying goods travel that route. Only the horse and trailers [articulated trucks] are not allowed to travel there because the bends are very sharp. For buses, they can travel there like any other vehicle,” Komphela told journalists after visiting the injured soldiers in the hospital.

“For the determination of what went wrong there, we’re working with specialists from the Road Traffic Management Corporation [RTMC]. Those are the people who will tell us what went wrong. They will tell us if it was a human error or the sharp bends. I’m sure, in a month’s time, before we tell you, we will give [Defence and Military Veterans] Minister [Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula] the RTMC report,” he said.

The bus driver, one of only two men in the bus carrying female soldiers to a Women’s Day event at the Basotho Cultural Village in Clarens, survived the accident and had not been charged.

“We are not charging people before we even get some statements from passengers that were in the bus. A charge of the driver will finally be determined by the examination we’re doing with the RTMC. We have opened up a docket but there is nothing happening there.

“We’re not interviewing people while they in the state they are in now. As soon as they recover we will be collecting some few statements there. The determining statement will be the one coming from the RTMC,” Komphela said.

Mapisa-Nqakula lamented the death of the 11 female soldiers during Women’s Month.

“It was all women [who died]. This is very unfortunate because this is the highest number of women we’ve lost as the South African National Defence Force. The last number of casualties we had was in the Central African Republic. Now we’ve lost women, during their month,” she said.

Among the dead soldiers, Mapisa-Nqakula singled out chaplain Phumza Teledimo Sondlo, who she said was highly resilient and provided spiritual guidance for the soldiers at the De Brug military base, a transit facility in Bloemfontein, before they get posted on missions across South Africa and beyond its borders.

Mapisa-Nqakula said the SANDF was focusing its efforts on giving support to the families of the dead soldiers and those injured.