SA truck driver jailed following fatal accident in Swaziland

Road carnage continues in Swaziland due to a poorly designed national highway combined with a lack of vehicle inspection. Two SA-registered trucks were involved in fatal accidents last week on Malagwane Hill outside Mbabane, and in an application of justice unusually swift for Swaziland, an SA driver last week was sentenced to a four-year imprisonment on charges of culpable homicide. This after his vehicle ploughed into a kombi transporting the national soccer team, Sihlangu, critically injuring several players and killing a star striker. The SA-registered vehicle involved in an accident at the same approximate location the next day also went out of control following brake failure. In both incidents traffic into Mbabane was halted for several hours. The situation has drawn attention to infrastructure limitations and a lack of vehicle inspection in the country. At a cost of R1.5bn, the new bypass road skirting Mbabane does not also bypass accident-prone Malagwane Hill, but connects at the top of the sharply descending switchback road. One road transporter noted:- “They missed a golden opportunity to build around this danger spot, but inexplicably ignored the chance. They’ve spent so much money on this bypass it will be a generation before they return.” Another shortcoming is the absence of alternative routes into the city, or emergency ramps for out-ofcontrol vehicles. The result is that while the costly and lengthy construction of the Mbabane Bypass Road was intended to make traffic flow swifter from the Oshoek Border Post to the Matsapha Industrial Estate and Manzini, the reality is that the old Malagwane Hill section remains a bottleneck at the best of times and a serious impediment to commercial freight haulage when accidents occur.