When Busani Dlamini died after he was shot next to his torched truck last Monday morning, it wasn’t just his three children who lost their father and bread winner.
The 45-year-old truck driver from Ixopo in Kwa-Zulu Natal was also the primary caregiver for his larger family, consisting of Dlamini’s younger brother Leonard and a few relatives.
Speaking to a talk station in Gauteng, Leonard Dlamini said his brother did not deserve to die the way he did, at the Leondale Road intersection with the N3 in the early hours of November 23.
“He was like a father to us. We were the only remaining members of our family.”
The driver’s brutal killing was the only fatality in eight days of violent labour-related unrest that flared up on the evening of November 19, and his death signifies what transporters and their workers have said on several occasions – that no life is worth losing for whatever reason.
Whether it’s a foreign national or a local whose family is in mourning doesn’t matter.
Also of no actual consequence is the reason why vigilantes thought they should set fire to trucks on South African supply-line routes.
What matters is that a truck driver had to pay with his life just to do his job and care for his extended family.