City Link bus driver’s leg missing

By Kay Kaseke

Not the best way to say good bye to your last child! A Magwegwe family, which lost their last surviving child, who died when a City Link bus collided head-on with a Nissan UD truck along the Harare-Bulawayo highway near Norton two weeks ago, had to endure the pain of burying their son without a leg last week after it “went missing” at the scene of the accident.

Mr Elliot Josita Ngozo, who was 45 years old, was the bus driver who was among the three who died on the spot and their bodies were taken to a funeral palour in Harare.

He was the last surviving son of the Josita Ngozo family after nine other children died.

The father of the deceased, Mr Andrea Josita Ngozo, said his son did not have a leg when he was brought from Harare and an official from Nyaradzo Funeral parlour who brought the body indicated that the leg was missing when the body was handed over to the company by police.

“He did not have his right leg when the body was retrieved, when they brought the body to Bulawayo, no one told us until we noticed it. All they said was they could not find it at the scene of the accident,” he said.

Mr Andrea Josita Ngozo said the family was heartbroken and added that if the leg was to be found they would not rebury it but burn or throw it away as per tradition.

The family is originally from Zambia.

“We cannot have two graves and we also cannot afford to exhume his body due to financial constraints and exhuming his body will be like disturbing him since he is resting, although should it be found it should be brought back to us,” he said.

He said he feared that the missing leg might be used for rituals as he had heard stories of body parts missing at accident scenes.

Mr Andrea Josita Ngozo said the only comfort he had was that the City Link Company had promised to pay the deceased children’s fees until they completed education although he was worried how the extended family which his son was supporting would fare.

“I am only comforted by the fact that they said they would pay full fees for his children, but now the problem is that he was also educating his late brother’s children and who is going to educate them,” he said.

His mother, Mrs Elena Josita Ngozo said her grandchildren had been left without parents as their mother died after a short illness in October last year.

“The fatal accident has left my grandchildren without a father and without parents as both the parents are now dead,” she said.

Mrs Ngozo said she suspected the missing leg of her son was mistakenly taken as part of the other driver’s body parts as she learnt that he was heavily injured resulting in some parts being crushed.

The late bus driver is survived by four children, who are all in school with the youngest in Grade 0. Sunday News