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BULAWAYO comedian and socialite Babongile Sikhonjwa and another well known comic Clive Chigubu escaped death by a whisker when a Mercedes Benz vehicle they were travelling in veered off the road and hit a pole before overturning at the Nguboyenja flyover in the early hours of Unity Day last month.
A bouncer from the Lounge Nightclub also sustained minor injuries in the crash that confined Sikhonjwa — a popular figure within the Bulawayo entertainment circles — to the Intensive Care Unit of Mpilo Central Hospital for close to two weeks.
The socialite was discharged from hospital on Monday and immediately took to social media to thank everyone for their prayers and paid special tribute to the staff at Mpilo for their professionalism and dedication to duty while dispelling the widely held myth that the hospital does not have modern equipment to deal with the type of injuries he sustained.
Sikhonjwa — who sustained a broken collar bone and cracked ribs – revealed that were it not for the sophisticated machinery in the Mpilo ICU, he wonders whether he would have made it out of the institution alive. We have now learnt that the accident which almost cost the comedian his life happened when his vehicle hit a huge pothole along Luveve road and he lost control of the car which then veered off the road, hit a pole and overturned.
The crater-like pothole — which Chronicle has now christened the “Sikhonjwa pothole” — is about a metre-wide and 15-20 centimetres deep. Motorists approaching the lane with the massive pothole have to make emergency stops to avoid driving through it. They are also forced to encroach onto the other lane, nearly causing accidents in the process.
Bulawayo is not unique in being faced with the mammoth task of attending to potholes which have multiplied with the onset of rains. Over the years, virtually major cities in Zimbabwe have been confronted with the problem which has been exacerbated by financial constraints and the ageing road network. With little or no assistance from central government, councils face a dilemma in attending to the various competing needs to their depleted revenues, hence the piecemeal approach to the problem of potholes.
We are aware of the efforts being made by the Bulawayo City Council in particular to address the issue. Here and there council trucks and workmen can be seen patching potholes but at the rate at which this problem is manifesting, we are afraid they are fighting a losing war. As the rains continue, more and more potholes are likely to appear on our roads with devastating consequences for the motoring public.
Local authorities, particularly of bigger cities like Bulawayo and Harare — are opening themselves up to possibilities of litigation from motorists whose vehicles would have been damaged by potholes. There is precedence here. In 2010, the Supreme Court upheld a High Court ruling ordering Harare City Council to pay for damages to former Stanbic Bank Managing Director Pindie Nyandoro’s Mercedes-Benz in 2007.
Nyandoro won the civil case in 2007 and council was ordered to pay Z$1,6 million. In January 2007, Nyandoro was driving along Enterprise Road towards the city centre when her Mercedes Benz hit a pothole, damaging the steering rack and a tie-rod end. She sued Harare City Council for negligence that resulted in damage to her vehicle.
In another case, the Harare City council was in October last year forced to fix two roads in Avondale that were in a deplorable state after a local businessman sued the council for failure to maintain its roads that were damaging his fleet of vehicles.
Maxwell Murombo Manatsa had approached the High Court seeking to force the city to maintain its roads, citing two roads, Ridge and Mount Roads in Avondale where he resides saying they were in a bad state and pushing up his vehicle maintenance costs. His bold and rare step to sue council paid dividends as the city took quick remedial action and fixed the two roads before the matter was heard before a judge.
The two cases show that it is possible for motorists to successfully sue councils for damage to their vehicles and local authorities are better advised to avoid this route by timeously attending to potholes.
Online Reporter