An education department official has described how she saw five teachers “tumbling and rolling” down a raging river.
|||KwaZulu-Natal - An education department official has described how she saw five teachers in a car “tumbling and rolling” down a raging river in northern KwaZulu-Natal.
“It was like I was watching a horror movie,” Mpume Gasa, who works for the department’s communications section, said on Monday.
“Even today I wish I could just wake up and realise that all this was just a scary dream.”
Two of the teachers in the car escaped, but the remaining three have not been found and are feared drowned.
The missing teachers are Phakamani Sikhakhane from Magogo Primary School, and Sizwe Ngobese and Sabelo Buthelezi from Mthashana FET College in Nquthu.
Gasa said she had been at a traditional function with the teachers.
She could not get the image of the car out of her mind. All five of the people in the car were crying for help, she said.
She and her friends were in another car and were driving home from the function on Sunday evening when a pedestrian stopped them and warned them about danger at the Chibide River bridge.
“The pedestrian told us that the bridge had been swept away. We were warned to wait until the river subsided,” Gasa said.
They were waiting for the floodwaters to subside when, about two hours later, they saw the dark grey Mercedes-Benz with the five teachers drive past them.
“The car plunged into the river. We watched helplessly as it somersaulted down the river,” Gasa said.
Education MEC Senzo Mchunu confirmed that the victims were teachers. He said their bodies had not been recovered by late yesterday.
“Our prayers are with the families,” he said.
Meanwhile, in Pietermaritzburg a search was under way for a man who was believed to have been swept away by the Msunduzi River.
It is thought Asogan Govender, 44, tried to cross a flooded low-level bridge on Sunday night. He called his brother-in-law, Kenny Naidoo, to say he was in trouble.
“Kenny, please help. I am in trouble. I am in the water and am going to die,” Naidoo heard Govender say before the call was cut off.
Govender, a divorced father of two, had dropped Naidoo off at his Raisethorpe home 10 minutes earlier.
Naidoo said that as soon as he received the call, he contacted his other brother-in-law Elvis Govender, and they rushed to help.
“I knew exactly where Asogan was as he often used the road as a short cut to his house,” said Naidoo.
Police spokeswoman Lieutenant Joey Jeevan said that as soon as the incident was reported, the area was searched.
“The police search has since intensified and the diving unit and the air wing have combed the area, without success,” she said. - The Mercury