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Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
THE last thing that Junior Moyo remembers about the night a horror car accident took 22 of her companions, is just falling asleep just because she did not like the music that was being played on the car’s speakers.
Moyo, an enterprising shop owner who hails from Ngwizi, Mangwe District in Matabeleland South, had left home early that morning, with hopes of making it across the border early to restock for her burgeoning business.
At first she had hoped to catch a bus but after missing it, she had been convinced to try one of the Toyota Quantum minibuses circling around Max Garage, looking for desperate travellers like herself.
“I left Ngwizi at around 6am coming to Bulawayo. I had initially wanted to board a bus but there were none left and I spoke to this man and he convinced me to get into a Quantum. There were three of us who couldn’t get a bus so we got on that minibus,” she said in an interview.
Moyo and her husband, Benjamin “Mpho” Ndlovu own two cars, including a Quantum of their own and on that fateful day, they were meant to have used at least one of them for the trip across the Limpopo. However, an unforeseen set of circumstances had conspired to force Moyo to make the trip to Bulawayo instead.
“We usually travel using our own vehicles with my husband but this time, there was a problem with the wiring of one of the cars and he had borrowed his friend another car. So, this time he had not travelled with me and he had decided to stay behind to make sure the car was fixed. He was only woken up by a phone call telling him that he should come to Bulawayo because there’s a problem with his wife,” she said.
At 10pm on 14 November, somewhere between Muchbinding and Ethandweni, about 30km from Bulawayo, on a smooth section of the Bulawayo-Beitbridge Road, the Quantum smashed head-first into a DAF truck. Moyo, the only survivor in that car, never saw the horrific collision. While the truck was still in Bulawayo, she had decided that she would catch up on some sleep, as she did not fancy that the Quantum was playing through its speakers. When steel met steel, wiping out 22 lives in an instant, she was oblivious to it all.
“The Quantum left sometime after 6pm. While we were at Max Garage, they started playing some music that I didn’t like so I thought it would be best if I caught some sleep. I thought maybe if I slept, by the time I woke up, the music will be done. I was sitting by the window seat, in the middle of the Quantum. I had paid R700 for the trip. I slept at Max Garage and the next time I woke up, I was here in hospital. I never heard a thing so I don’t know what kind of pain people endured during the accident but I do remember being in a Quantum and that’s all,” she said.
Moyo, who had boarded one Quantum before she and two other persons were unloaded onto the vehicle that eventually crashed, said she had been uneasy about changing cars before the journey begun.
“I was not happy about getting into that car and I had even refused to go in initially. I had found a friend while we were waiting, a lady that was wearing jeans torn around the knees and a top that left her belly out. She was the one that convinced me to get in because she said ‘my friend, I know these people, let’s just go with them, it will be alright.’ That is why I ended up deciding to just sleep at the start of that journey because I was not happy.
The car was too full and I didn’t even like the seats on the car because they were not properly covered. I was not happy because I had been removed from the nicer Quantum where it was just the three of us and taken to this one that wasn’t so great. Everyone else was already in the car and we were the three that were used to fill it up,” she said.
Moyo, among the few things she recalls was a conversation with her minders, whose faces she could not see.
“I woke the next morning after the accident. I remember during the night I was speaking to the nurses and doctors but I could not see who I was talking to. I remember them tearing my clothes and I even asked them to keep my top because I like it.
“I am not sure where or when I was talking to the person who asked to keep the bag for me. I don’t know if it was at the accident scene or when I was brought here. It’s not clear because everything is a blur. I just remember a person picking me up and I also remember telling that person that they should not forget my bag,” she said.
As Moyo got her bearings after the accident, it had not yet dawned on her that the vehicle she had left in was now just a heap of mangled steel on the Beitbridge highway. It took her a few days to realise that she was the lone survivor from the accident.
“Now I know I am the only survivor but all along, they were hiding it from me. People were coming here and I got the impression that I was the only survivor and even my friends from back at the shops were coming here and showing joy at the fact that I had somehow survived. Their joy just made me realise that I am the only survivor of this accident,” she said.
Somewhere between the accident scene and Mpilo hospital where she was admitted, a delirious Moyo recalls giving someone her bag, which had R56 000 in it, money she needed to retool her business. She never saw the bag or her money again.
“I never saw a thing. I had no idea I had broken my legs. I could still see a bit and speak when everything was happening. I remember I kept asking for my bag. Even when I was admitted here, I told the nurses that I wanted my bag because I had left it with a man that had stayed behind outside. From the accident scene, I don’t remember anything at all but knew I had given my bag to someone I felt was trustworthy. I remember telling the person that all my particulars, including the identity documents for my children and husband and all the cash that I had, were inside that bag,” she said.
Moyo said she did not regard the loss of the money, a handsome sum in its own right, as a loss, as her life was spared instead. The money, she said, had paid for her life.
“In my mind, I just concluded that my money had bought my life. I am alive, my money is gone and it has paid for my life. I don’t care about the money because at least I have my life. The Lord must have seen that I still need to be here to take care of my six children,” she said.
Before she woke up in hospital for the first time, Moyo said she had a dream in which two of her grandmothers, who passed away long back, invited her inside a nice house, asking her to shelter from some rain. She had refused, choosing instead to hide from the downpour from the shed of the house.
“When my dream ended, that is when I woke up. I dreamt about two of my grandmothers. In truth, I did not have a good relationship with them when they were still alive. They had built a very nice house and it was raining so they asked me to come and take shelter. I thought about going in but because I didn’t like them, I decided to use the shed of their house as shelter from the rain because in the dream my husband had told me to wait for him till morning so we could go together. When I woke up I was here in the hospital and my husband was next to me,” he said.
The accident happened on 14 November and the Government assisted in the burial of the 22 lives lost. A number of those who died were cross-border transporters, known as omalayitsha. Another victim was a man who had buried his mother-in-law in Bulawayo two days before the tragic accident.
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