A foreign trucker is lucky to have escaped with his life after he was ambushed on R74 near Ladysmith on Monday night.
According to the trucker, he suspects that the people he conversed with at Estcourt Ultra-City on the N3 may be involved in the attack that left his Scania truck and tanker razed to the ground.
He said that he stopped at the garage to buy coffee and as he walked to the shop, three guys greeted him and he greeted them back.
“The other guy then asked for my driver’s licence and I refused and told him he had no right to ask for my licence,” said the trucker.
[loosely translated from Zulu] “You foreigners do as you please like this is your country, you want to go back when you are dead,” the man said.
“I sensed danger and abandoned my mission, turned and went back.
Read also: Foreign Truck Drivers Plan Downing Tools Over Government’s Failure To Protect Them
“While going back, I thought these guys might be following me so I went a different truck just to try and lose them,” he added.
The trucker said he later realised that his jacket had the company name printed on it hence they already knew which truck he may have been driving.
“I quickly rushed to my truck and drove off,” he said.
Upon joining the N3, he alleges that he noticed a Red Toyota Etios driving suspiciously.
He proceeded with his journey. He said after passing Colenso going towards eZakheni he noticed a car similar to the Etios he saw on the N3 and another car going the opposite direction with him.
As he was going uphill, two people emerged from the bushes and hit the truck’s windscreen on the driver’s side.
“I was doing about 20km/h, so I thought if these guys manage to stop me, I won’t be able to escape, so I stopped the truck, pulled the handbrake and abandoned the truck, running towards the direction I was coming from,” he said.
After about a minute or two of running the trucker turned his head and saw a ball of fire had engulfed the truck. He suspects that the assailants threw a petrol bomb at the truck.
“By that time, I was about 300m to 400m away from the truck, so I hid in the bushes and watched the truck burn,” the trucker told SA Trucker.
He said that he only came out of the bushes a few moments later after seeing a police van stop at the scene.
“I explained to the cops what had happened and they told me they had seen some guys getting into a car and speed off. They said they chased after them but were not able to catch up,” he said.
The truck and the tanker was completely destroyed in the inferno.
SA Trucker advises truckers to be wary of these attacks as vigilantes have stepped up their efforts to make life unbearable for immigrant truck drivers.
