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Gerald Maguranyanga
LET us please, just this once; all of us, the Proudly Zimbabwean, get decisively frank. Brutally candid – what is the foremost ingredient, the devilish, lead-supplier, of the countless, gruesome accidents that decimate life-and-limb on our roads?

The Chisumbanje community and the nation-at-large is still in tear-jerking agony; but more so, one ill-fated family that, in a flash, woefully lost plenty close relations; the sorry victims helplessly frying to a pulp, ALIVE; in that unforgettable man-made, ethanol-fired mini-holocaust.

The typical Zimbabwean driver-behaviour on the road is bad news! I know the usual, tired complaint is that our roads are well-past their sell-by-date and were now dreadful. Okay, that is a fair point. Road condition is one of four fundamental parameters traffic fundis worldwide list as playing a big part in road traffic accidents (RTAs). The other major conditions for creating the deadly concoction, are said to be (inclement) weather, vehicle condition and the driver behaviour/condition!

A cursory look at our well-heeled neighbour, South Africa, will validate that they have roads so fantastic, they are incomparable to any in Africa. Sadly though, as so-often happens on our continent, many innocent thousands are slaughtered on these, out-of-this-world roads annually. In-fact, the South African authorities dread the advent of December, the “festive” month; which month relentlessly depicts and surely beats, hands down, by body bag-count, the goriness of all horror movies put together!

In fact, behemoth movie makers; your Universal, your 20th Century Fox Studios etc; in their wildest imagination, could never match, let-alone beat the sheer repulsive horror South African roads churn-out in the dreaded month of December . . . pitifully dismembered bodies, literal human-blood rivulets, badly twisted car wrecks etc. God-forbid, but that seasonal, exclusive, made-in-South Africa, Highway Horror Show is, sorrowfully, just days away.

The horror-averse will as much as possible, stay at home, lest one got reluctantly scripted a part in a fright movie where the stars are never guaranteed the right-to-life. Yes, be very much afraid as all that dread is just upon us. Sadly, one could say the very same about Zimbabwe.

In December, RTAs assume a whole-new-dimension of wickedness. The key difference between South Africans and us is that they do not blame the carnage on anybody but the driver. Therefore, in my book, South Africa is halfway to striking their road-slaughter solution. They have uncovered their devil.

Daily, lo-and-behold, driving down Samora Machel Avenue, Borrowdale Road and such other dual carriageways, I am bamboozled by the happy-go-lucky driver that incessantly, at a super-slow 40km/hr, blissfully holds-up traffic in the inside overtaking lane, oblivious to all the commotion, mayhem and foul-swearing they are inducing all around them!
Did this oh-so-common dismal driver, in-fact, actually sign-up at driving school and get schooled on how to safely and more-productively share the road with all?

The worn-out tyre, so much a cause of the frequent blow-out that has killed and maimed thousands of trusting passengers on the commuter omnibus, has nothing to do with the condition of the road. The widespread corrupt traffic cop did not, in the first place, forcefully affix the bad tyre to any vehicle! Failing to apply reason and appropriately adjust to inclement weather has nothing; zero, to do with the road condition.

In-fact, the register of the pathetic unreasonableness on Zimbabwean roads is frighteningly long; the unrestrained kid playfully standing on the front seat of a moving vehicle; the haulage truck ejecting a loose brick every 500m of road; the common number-plate-less car, the totally-unlit vehicle at night/in driving rain, the overtaking-lane hog, the routine drinking driver, the texting distracted driver, utter disregard for the mandatory safety belt, and the one that takes the cup, the distracted, drive-as-you-phone habit perpetrated by virtually all of us and many other infringements too numerous to mention! And we have the temerity to blame the poor defence-less road! Kupenga chaiko!

The preliminary assessment of the Chisumbanje mayhem starkly accuses the one driver of dozing, induced by apparent fatigue from long, overnight driving, resultantly straying into on-coming traffic; creating nationwide heartache . . . which, it may be argued, leads many to falsely attribute the devil unearned infamy.

Thirty-odd “passengers” were in the load-pan of the Mazda truck that starred in the Chisumbanje disaster. What does the law actually say about the ferrying of “passengers” in the place of goods, in the back of a truck?

What is the head-count limitation of persons that a Class-4-certified driver can legally carry? Has anyone actually ever been arrested for that infraction?

Please, for once, let’s stop pointing fingers at inclement weather (it drives no motor car!); the road condition (it drives no motor car either!); vehicle condition (no vehicle miraculously sets out onto the road by itself!), and aptly focus on the obvious chief cause of all this murderous mayhem – the largely dismal Zimbabwean driver, notoriously led by that most-despicable of drivers . . . the low-life, barbaric, homicidal, smelly, cop-killing commuter omnibus “driver”.

Gerald Maguranyanga moderates RoSA (Road Safety Africa), a new, interactive FaceBook page that debates ideas to curb RTAs (road traffic accidents) in Zimbabwe and Africa