The municipality is stepping up efforts to combat drinking and driving this festive season to protect pedestrians and motorists like 18-year-old Shamele King, who nearly lost mobility in his neck last year after being struck by a drunk driver.
King, a pupil at Alphendale Senior Secondary School, was walking with a friend toward his home on the Douglas Smith Highway sidewalk ahead of last festive season when both were hit from behind by an intoxicated motorist.
King landed on his neck and back on the grass nearby, while his friend and another pedestrian were left lying in the road.
Nearby residents called police and an ambulance, who arrived quickly to apprehend the driver and take King and the other two to the hospital, preventing any fatalities.
“As I lay on the grass, I started panicking because I could see that my friend was not moving,” King said.
“I couldn’t think straight, and all I knew was that I was in a lot of pain in my neck. My whole body felt cold and numb. By the grace of God, my friend and I were saved.”
King missed his exams due to a severely injured right hand and ongoing recovery. “I had a great support system in my family who helped me recover because at one point, I couldn’t even wash myself. To this day, I still struggle with full mobility on my right side, and my shoulders are uneven, but I’m grateful to be alive,” he said.
The experience inspired King to pursue a career as a traffic officer to help prevent others from facing similar near-fatal experiences. He and his mother, Sarah, are calling for stronger measures, including suspending drivers’ licenses and imposing heavy fines and jail sentences.
Sarah said: “It broke my heart to see my son in so much pain, and even today, he lives with the long-term effects, including constant physical fatigue. Drivers need to adhere to the rules of the road and consider the lives of others and themselves.”
The Buffalo City Municipality announced plans this week to roll out drunk driving campaigns with the SAPS and BCMM law enforcement in high-risk areas near the beaches. Traffic officers will be stationed along the beaches to address driving infractions, and the municipality will employ the SAB-donated mobile alcohol evidence centre. Talks are underway with local clinics and hospitals to assign dedicated nursing staff to collect blood samples from suspected drunk drivers.
Residents of Gonubie, however, remain skeptical about authorities’ capacity to curb drunk driving in time for December. Many residents report ongoing accidents and property damage caused by drunk drivers.
“No one is safe on our roads,” resident Elna Smit said. “In July, a man drove through the barrier on Oceanway Road, where two young guys were fishing, and only by the grace of God was no one killed. I’ve seen little law enforcement here to deter drunk drivers.”
Gonubie residents, through their ward councilor, are advocating for an increased police presence near hotspots like Gonubie Hotel and the installation of rumble strips to discourage speeding.
Beacon Bay has seen similar issues on Bonza Bay Road and Batting Bridge Road, where accidents are often caused by intoxicated drivers leaving nearby picnic and beach areas.
The Beacon Bay ward councilor’s office has partnered with Tidy Towns Buffalo City to conduct awareness campaigns, joined by the Beacon Bay Ratepayers’ Association, to address public drinking in these spaces in the lead-up to the festive season. Plans are also underway to erect signs displaying bylaws against public drinking.
Ward councilor Frederick Pohl emphasised the need for more resources to tackle alcohol abuse and drunk driving. “We have excellent authorities who are hampered in fulfilling their duties because of the lack of resources allocated to them.”
Caro Smit, from South Africans Against Drunk Driving (SADD), said that in SA, 35 people a day lose their lives as a result of drinking and driving.
However, driving under the influence remains an under rated crime as SADD has found that transport departments and traffic police would prefer to concentrate more on issuing speeding fines and are hampered by a lack of equipment such as breathalysers and insufficient training for officers, which has led to poor post-crash evidence.
This, in turn, leads to low conviction rates of drunk drivers despite driving under the influence being behind 50% of our deaths in SA.
Smit said: “At SADD we advocate for more frequent testing and issuing people with criminal records including automatic jail time if someone is injured or killed.
“We need special courts for drink driving cases and more training for SAPS officers, who are prone to letting drivers off with a warning and only test with breathalysers after someone has been killed.
“A seasoned drinker or alcoholic can drink an enormous amount and appear to be fine, which means they slip under the radar of detection exacerbated by problem that, in SA, we are not testing frequently enough at road blocks for drink driving.”
