Grief and loss hung heavy in Johannesburg’s Sebokeng township, as three of the 14 victims of last week’s tragic scholar transport crash in Vanderbijlpark were laid to rest on Sunday. The three small coffins, belonging to Thato Moetji, Ofentse Vinger and Bokamoso Mokhoboto, lay side by side, surrounded by grieving family members, who spoke of the trauma of losing a child under horrific circumstances and having their child’s life cut short. The crash has reignited calls for government to enforce traffic laws and tighten learner transport operator compliance regulations.
Addressing the mourners, Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi said the tragedy was a call for the provincial government to reflect on issues of learner transport compliance and the enforcement of traffic laws. We come here disappointed; we come here disturbed. We need to be frank and examine ourselves.
We can’t have a system where a road to school should lead our children to a graveyard. He stressed it could not be business as usual going forward and that government would have to rethink the way it enforced traffic laws. In messages read out during the funeral service, family members spoke about the bright future they had envisioned for their children, and the trauma of having to bury them just a week after the start of the school year.
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The family of six-year-old Ofentse Jayden Vinger told the throngs of mourners gathered at the Soul Tsotetsi Multi-Purpose Centre that his death wiped out the tears of excitement they had when he started his Grade 1 education on January 7. “Ofentse was a bright and loving child whose warm smile brought happiness to everyone around him. Oh son, you were so young; we only had you for six years. When you started your Grade 1 lessons, we never thought it was going to be for only three days,” the family of the deceased Vanderbijlpark Oliver Lodge Primary School Grade 1 pupil said.
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