Horror taxi crash: mom’s agony
The fear of losing another child is too much to bear for a mom whose son is in ICU after the horror taxi crash.
|||Johannesburg - On Sunday evening, Mapone Mohoje heard on the news that 19 people had died in an accident between a minibus taxi and a truck, but only the next morning did the full impact of the crash hit her.
She received a call that no mother wants to get. Her son Bongani “Boiki” Mculwane was one of the passengers in the taxi and was in hospital fighting for his life.
Mohoje, a domestic worker at a farm near Fochville in Gauteng, rushed to the hospital, where she found her son in intensive care.
“His face was burnt, his left leg was broken and both hands were burnt,” she said.
Boiki was one of the 24 congregants from Holy Spirit Culture Church in the minibus that crashed after one of its tyres burst on Sunday afternoon.
The taxi was travelling on the R28 when the driver lost control. It hit a truck and ejected the passengers as it rolled.
The taxi then burst into flames.
Nineteen people died at the scene and five others were taken to hospital.
Mohoje, 45, said the taxi her son usually took used a different route to the one taken that day.
Still trying to come to terms with the gruesome death of her other son two years ago, she had to be treated for shock. In December 2013, Mlanjane Mculwane, 23, was killed in a tractor accident on a farm in Tweefontein, Mpumalanga, where he worked.
The pain of losing her son was too much for Mohoje and she spent two months in hospital being treated for stress.
When she heard that her other son was seriously injured, she feared she might lose him too.
Most of the people in the taxi belonged to one family. Thirteen of the 24 people were Moshe Moeletsi’s siblings, cousins, nephews and nieces.
botho.molosankwe@inl.co.za
The Star