Selfless 'bra Slabbert' lauded

2003-05-02 15:17

Bethlehem - Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana on Friday thanked the hero of the Workers' Day bus disaster in the eastern Free State, who plucked eight of the 10 survivors to safety.

"He helped without thinking," Mdladlana said of municipal official Len Slabbert.

Slabbert lives right next to the Saulspoort Dam near Bethlehem, where an estimated 63 union members drowned on Thursday on their way to a Workers' Day rally in QwaQwa.

After two survivors managed to swim out and call for help shortly after 05:00, Slabbert was the first to rush to the waterside.

"There was no bus, only a dark blur and a couple of people on the water."

Slabbert, who had served nine years as a skipper for the National Sea Rescue Institute, ran back to his house to fetch his boat and rescue the victims.

He also retrieved five floating bodies from the water before the official rescue operation got underway.

Embraced the hero

Mdladlana, who is also acting in the transport portfolio, said Slabbert was the one person he wanted to thank on behalf of the whole of South Africa's working population.

"These are the people the country must recognise," Mdladlana said, calling Slabbert "my brother".

Both Mdladlana and Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu), embraced Slabbert and ambulance officer Rudi Kok, who had helped him on Thursday morning.

Slabbert, working at the local municipality's sewage works, said the trauma of the rescue was hitting him only now.

"I become very emotional from time to time."

He said he felt very sorry for the Sol Plaatje municipality in Kimberley, as many of their workers died in the disaster.

"A whole municipality was affected. It is difficult to contemplate," he said.

- SAPA