Investigators are looking at a host of factors that could have led to Tuesday’s bus-train collision in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, that killed 35 people. The bus had been speeding, carrying double its passenger capacity, and the driver was underage.
Another possible culprit in the crash was Zimbabwe’s worst economic crisis since independence in 1980.
With inflation running at nearly 1 600% — the highest in the world — and foreign exchange scarce, neither the government nor private employers can afford basic maintenance of roads, rails and vehicles, or to pay trained staff.
The decline of what was once one of the region’s strongest economies followed the often-violent seizures of more than 5 000 white-owned commercial farms that began in 2000 on the orders of President Robert Mugabe. Agriculture had been the mainstay of the economy.
In a report on Tuesday, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group said that rifts in Mugabe’s ruling party over his continued leadership and rising discontent in the armed forces, along with ”energised” opponents and civil society groups, could trigger unrest.
In the bus-train crash, investigators noted that electric warning signals and booms had not been functioning for several years at the western Harare crossing where the overcrowded, 33-seater bus collided with a freight train. The state railroad company and the local town council also failed to cut long grass obscuring the view of oncoming trains, investigators said.
The money-losing National Railways company has reported huge losses to thieves and vandals of its signals and cables across the country. This has disabled much of its signalling in recent years.
State enterprises are facing acute shortages of hard currency for replacing equipment and spare parts. Shortages of spares and petrol have also crippled garbage collection, road repairs and other routine services.
On Monday, the Transport Ministry said it had run out of money for street and highway repairs. It said all its nine main road-repair units were shut down.
”The road department had nine units and none of them are in existence now. All the equipment has collapsed,” ministry official George Mlilo told a meeting of lawmakers.
Soaring prices for petrol, parts, tires and maintenance have led transport operators to continue using dangerous vehicles despite checks at undermanned police road blocks, to overload them and to employ unqualified workers — often relatives whom can pay less.
They have also stepped up their schedules and paid bonuses for quicker turnarounds to earn more on commuter routes.
The driver of the bus involved in Tuesday’s crash, Givemore Makowe, was too young at 24 to hold a bus licence. The bus was ordered off the roads last year by government inspectors. Its rear brakes, examined in the wreckage, had not been functioning.
Most of Tuesday’s dead were impoverished market-stall holders eking out a living in Harare market. They were headed to the market with baskets of wares when the crash happened just after 5am local time.
The government declared the crash a national disaster and on Wednesday promised to compensate the families of the victims. But past promises of money and state assistance for funerals of national disaster victims have largely not been honoured by cash-strapped authorities. — Sapa-AP