/ 5 April 2004

‘Happy’ fighting for life after accident

Abbey Mzayiya, better known as Happy Sindane, was still in a serious condition in the Pretoria Academic hospital on Monday morning, after he was run over by a car and a minibus taxi on Saturday night.

Hospital spokesperson Amelia Lodi said Mzayiya’s condition was serious but stable. There had been no improvement in his condition since Sunday, when he underwent surgery that lasted about 10 hours.

Mzayiya was injured on Saturday night when a minibus taxi and a car drove over him as he lay in the road outside the Sinzanani Village Trust place of safety in Bronkhorstspruit east of Pretoria, where he lived.

The Johannesburg Daily Sun tabloid newspaper reported on Monday that Sindane had been drinking heavily on Saturday.

Nineteen-year-old Mzayiya suffered severe facial and chest injuries during Saturday’s accident.

He made headlines last year when he showed up at the police station in Bronkhorstspruit claiming that he was a white child who had been kidnapped from his home at the age of six and had grown up in townships.

It was later established that he was the child of a black woman and a white man and that his real name was Abbey Mzayiya. – Sapa