Chabane ‘ran his race’

[caption id="attachment_73192" align="alignright" width="300"] Collins Chabane[/caption]

Stalwart spoke of road danger hours before fatal crash

HOURS before his death Collins Chabane, Minister of Public Service and Administration, warned his colleagues to avoid longdistance driving and of the risks of being involved in road accidents – the very thing that would kill him and his bodyguards.

Travelling with two SAPS VIP Protection Unit members – Lesiba Sekele and Lawrence Lentsoane – Chabane, 54, died early yesterday when their car crashed into a truck on the N1 between Limpopo and Pretoria.

Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe said Chabane’s car and the truck were travelling in the same direction, with the truck on the left.

The truck driver made a U-turn and Chabane’s white VW Touareg slammed into it.

The car was a mangled wreck of steel and rubber.

The truck – still very much intact – stood in the middle of the freeway, a slight dent on the side the only evidence that it had been involved in a crash.

Just hours earlier, Chabane, known in the ANC as “the Animal”, had addressed mourners at the funeral of Samuel Nxumalo in Magona.

He implored them to refrain from travelling long distances, warning that fatigue would set in.

The result, Chabane warned, was a plethora of road fatalities.

While Radebe would neither deny nor confirm allegations, Times Media has learnt that tests by police showed the truck driver was allegedly drunk, and the truck’s licence disc had expired on December 31. Radebe said police investigations would reveal the cause of the crash.

A police officer, who attended the crash scene and did not want to be named, said: “On arresting the truck driver, we conducted tests on him. It came out as 0.08%, which is above the legal limit of 0.02%.”