The tragic injury of 10-year-old Azariah Pietersen highlights urgent calls for safer roads in Gqeberha, as residents demand action against reckless driving. Instead, her school bag lies untouched at the family’s home in Missionvale as she recovers from injuries that nearly claimed her life last spring. “It’s painful to see her sad like this and just sitting at home.
My child has always been happy and playful. All she wants is to be back at school,” her mother, Junita, said. “Yet the taxi driver who [allegedly] hit her still drives around as if nothing happened.” Residents of this Gqeberha neighbourhood have for years pleaded for traffic-calming measures on Old Uitenhage Road, a busy corridor frequented often by speeding taxis, buses and trucks.
Near Old Uitenhage Road runs the notorious R75, about which Daily Maverick has repeatedly reported in connection with malfunctioning traffic lights and a string of fatal crashes. Ward 31 councillor Teslin Booysen and parents living along the route say taxis often barrel through stop streets at speed. An informal taxi rank has also mushroomed on the corner of Johnson Road and Old Uitenhage Road.
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It was not far from this informal taxi rank that a taxi hit Azariah on the afternoon of 8 September 2025. According to her father, Christopher, she had asked for money to go to the shop across the road shortly after 3pm. A bus slowed to let her cross, but as she stepped forward, it is alleged that a fully loaded taxi sped past at “a terrifying speed”, skipping the stop before hitting the child.
“The taxi only stopped about 300 metres away,” Christopher Pietersen said. Passengers scrambled out as the driver reversed back towards the injured girl lying sprawled in the middle of the road. “When he got out, I realised he was [allegedly] under the influence.
He apologised and admitted he’d been drinking,” he said. What followed was chaos, which Pietersen says is a symptom of residents’ frustration.
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