Rheenendal bus crash — 10 years on

She can still hear the screams of terrified children as the bus swerved.

Down the road is another mother, the self-blame eating away at her.

One family opted to move out of the area to try escape the constant reminder of how their children had died in a horror bus crash.

Exactly 10 years ago on Tuesday, 14 little lives were lost.

Rheenendal is a small rural settlement situated 12km from Knysna. It has a population of about 4,000 people.

For most of the residents living there, they struggle to make ends meet. 

August 24 2011 started out like any other day. 

It was a chilly morning as children were hurried by their parents to get up and dressed for school.

The African Express Tata school bus was on its way to fetch them.

“I told her ‘the bus is coming now, the bus is coming now’, not knowing that was the last time I was going to see her alive,”  Kitti Lourens said  of her final moments with her granddaughter.

“I heard a loud noise.

“I ran as fast as I could to where the bus was submerged in the water.”

Lourens’s granddaughter, Octavia Williams, died when her school bus plunged into Kasat-se-Drift outside Knysna.

Octavia was one of 14 children to die that day, and together with the bus driver, they soon became known as the “Rheenendal 15”.

While a decade has already gone by, for at least 15 families, the pain is still raw.

A Herald team travelled to the small farming community of Rheenendal to meet some of the families of Felicity Fiegeland, 10, Andre Fiegeland, 12, Maurisha Fiegeland, 15, Lugan Mello, 8, Lisa Mello, 9, Antonio Mello, 6, Michael Sass, 9, Cheswin Freiburg, 15, Rayleen Wessels, 11, Marco Kiewiets, 11, Jorina Kiewiets, 7, Marushaan Meyer, 13, Ashwell Davidson, 17, and the bus driver, Tiaan Colin Pyle, 65.

To mark their deaths, a lone wooden cross stands at the accident scene.

Despite a finding by a Knysna magistrate that there was prima facie evidence of negligence, the deputy director of public prosecutions opted not to prosecute.

Lourens said on the morning of the crash, her granddaughter had been late for the bus.

But, in a cruel twist of fate, the bus driver returned from his other regular stops to pick her up.

Had she not climbed onto the bus that day, she would likely have still been alive.

Becoming agitated, Lourens said she felt guilty because she had insisted Octavia go to school that morning.

After the crash, as Lourens and her husband ran to the accident scene, they shouted out Octavia’s name, praying that she was alive.

“Now I do not have a single thing that belongs to her in this house because I feel that I am responsible for her death. 

“I wish I could go back to that day and let her not go to school.”

Joslyn Lamini shares in her grief.

The 35-year-old mother says she misses her best friend, avid soccer player and future accountant.

Lugan Mello was only eight years old.

“When I had him I was very young and still in school. But I did not let my grades slip and instead became the best mom that I could.

“He was my world,” she said.

“I took the responsibility to work extra hours for him when his father abandoned us.”  

The birth of her youngest son on August 24 2019 does not make the day any easier — in fact it makes it rather difficult as Lamini finds herself torn between grief and wanting to celebrate the child that is still alive.

“It’s hard to celebrate when a part of your heart is gone forever,” Lamini said.

“I always imagine what he could be. Last year, he would have been in matric, having a farewell party with his classmates.”

For Veronica Kiewiets, 34, living so close to the scene of the crash became too much to bare.

She opted to move away, to the shanty informal settlement of Concordia, to “escape the pain”. 

Kiewiets suffered a double loss. Her daughter, Jorina, 7, and her “baby” brother, Marco, 11, died in the crash.

Jorina’s, identical twin Jorica, who turns 17 this year, was also in the accident but was one of the few to survive. 

“I left that place because all the memories are there, every time I do something small like go to town I drive past that accident scene. 

“And there is not a day I do not think about her because her sister obviously looks like her. 

“When I see her, I see my other child too,” Kiewiets said through tears. 

Johanna Meyer, 41, speaking at her daughter Marushaan’s gravesite, said it had been difficult to move on with her life. 

“The wound will never go away, It will always be there because I was her mother, she was a part of me. 

“Every time I think of her I cry. I will never have another child like her.” 

Paulina Fiegland, 52, lost all three of her children that day.

She is so deeply traumatised by the incident that she cannot speak about it.

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