Search goes on for bus dead

2003-05-01 23:02

Bethlehem - Only 46 bodies had been found by Thursday evening of the 63 people confirmed dead in one of South Africa's worst bus disasters.

By dusk police divers were still searching the cold deep waters of the Saulspoort Dam near Bethlehem after a bus plunged into the dam in the early hours of the morning.

They were not expecting to find any survivors, Superintendent Sam Sesing said.

The retrieved bus, with a few windows missing, was standing by the waterside. It had been pulled out by a recovery truck.

The bus, from a Northern Cape service, was to carry an estimated 70 to 80 Congress of SA Trade Union (Cosatu) members, all adults, from Kimberley to a Workers' Day rally at Phuthaditjhaba, Qwa Qwa.

The African National Congress (ANC) in the Free State said earlier on Thursday 63 people had been confirmed dead in the accident.

Sesing said it was still uncertain exactly how many passengers were on the submerged bus. Passengers from the disaster bus and another bus were said to have transferred between the two vehicles in Bethlehem shortly before the accident.

The driver apparently lost his bearings in the dark in town, took a wrong turn and drove down a gravel road, eventually plunging the bus into the dam around 05:00.

The bus entered the dam at the bottom of a slope normally used to launch boats.

Emergency workers battled until after 14:00 to retrieve the submerged bus, still containing many bodies, from the water.

The driver was also among the dead.

The ten survivors escaped shortly after the accident through the bus windows. Two of them managed to swim out and call for help. Municipal official Len Slabbert, who was first on the scene, rescued the other eight in his inflatable boat.

Theodora van Wyk, the only woman among the survivors, told Sapa how passengers started screaming when the bus careered down the gravel slope into the dam.

Driver asked for directions

Van Wyk, a cashier at the Sol Plaatje municipality, Kimberley, said the two drivers on the bus changed shortly before the accident at a filling station in Bethlehem. The new driver asked directions from a pump attendant.

A senior ANC official forbade the survivors from talking further to the media, saying they were traumatised.

None of the survivors were seriously injured. All were discharged from hospital after a visit by Free State MECs for transport and security Sekhopi Malebo and Benny Kotsoane.

ANC Free State chairperson Ace Magashule said most of the dead were members of the SA Municipal Workers Union, two were National Education and Allied Workers Union members and at least one was a Communication Workers Union members.

The Free State and Northern Cape governments arranged for the bodies to be taken to Bloemfontein.

Assistance to the next-of-kin is to be discussed at a meeting on Friday, Magashule said.

Cosatu president Willie Madisha, who was scheduled to speak at the Qwa Qwa stadium with the ANC's Kgalema Motlanthe and the SA Communist Party's Blade Nzimande, went to the scene of the accident before proceeding to the rally.

Condolences and expressions of shock and regret have poured in.

President Thabo Mbeki observed a minute's silence and paid tribute to the victims at a Workers' Day address at Newtown, Johannesburg.

Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven said the union federation was "devastated".

Cosatu also announced official mourning, starting on Thursday "until the funerals have taken place".

Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon extended his condolences at a rally in the North West and also telephoned Cosatu's general-secretary Zwelinzima Vavi to convey a personal message expressing his shock at the tragic event.

Relief fund

Peoples Bank announced it had established a relief fund into which it had donated R100 000 to assist the next of kin of those who died.

"Anyone wishing to make a donation to the fund could do so at any Peoples Bank from Friday. The banking details are: Workers' Day relief Fund; Account number: 2947000013," the bank said in a statement.

Acting Transport Minister Membathisi Mdladlana is to visit the scene of the accident on Friday at 10:00.

The department of transport said in a statement on Thursday night that the acting minister would lay a wreath at the scene, meet rescue officials, and discuss government support for the victims and their families.

He would also make an announcement on the process of the investigation into the accident.

The Saulspoort accident was the third of its kind in 18 years. In March 1985 42 schoolchildren pupils died when a Johannesburg municipal double-decker bus jumped the pavement and sank in the Westdene dam. In the mid-1990s a bus carrying some 90 forestry workers to work plunged into a dam near Lothair, near the Swazi border, claiming 38 lives.

- SAPA