The news landed on Monday morning like a blow from a lead hammer: former Bafana Bafana player Anele Ngcongca had died in a car accident in northern KwaZulu-Natal at 5am.
Tributes immediately started pouring in for the 33-year-old defender, who was set to play another season in the South African top flight with Durban-based AmaZulu FC. He had previously played more than 50 times for his country and won close to 300 caps for Belgian side Genk, where he won the league title once and the Belgium Cup twice. He was named in the club’s team of the decade, alongside illustrious players including Kevin de Bruyne, Thibaut Courtois, Wilfred Ndidi, Kalidou Koulibaly and Sergej Milinković-Savić.
Details of the N2 crash revealed that Ngcongca’s body was found about 30m from the wreckage. He was dead before paramedics arrived. The driver, an unnamed woman, was trapped in the vehicle. By Monday afternoon she was in hospital in a critical condition.
Ngcongca’s death should be mourned and serve as a reminder of the importance of road safety, especially as the festive season fast approaches.
Last December, 1,617 people died in 1,390 fatal road crashes. The December before, there were 1,789 deaths from 1,438 accidents. That’s a frightening 3,406 deaths in 2,828 accidents — and in just two festive seasons.
If we look at the past two calendar years, there have been about 26,000 deaths on the country’s roads. And this, the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) was quoted as saying in August, cost the nation about R176bn.
This is a devastating number of deaths.
Government, surely, should up its game. The flaws in the proposed AARTO legislation, the readiness of traffic officials to accept bribes and the failure to ensure unroadworthy and overloaded vehicles stay off the roads show the state’s frailties in keeping its commuters safe.
But the government cannot take all the blame.
The RTMC has said human factors make up about 85% of contributing factors to crashes, followed by road, environmental and vehicle factors. Human factors? That’s us, road users, whether behind the wheel or as pedestrians. That’s us as drunk drivers and distracted drivers. That’s us crossing the road without looking. That’s us speeding or driving unroadworthy vehicles. It’s us causing deaths that could be avoided if we took more care.
Anele Ngcongca was a legend of SA football and a legend for his club in Belgium. His was a name known in domestic and European soccer. Perhaps his death in a roll-over crash will serve as a reminder to all of us that we have a responsibility to ourselves and, most importantly, others to be safe and sensible.
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