Gerard van Niekerk was a print journalist at the time of the Westdene dam bus disaster and was on duty that day (March 27, 1985).
He remembers hearing the office teleprinter machine coming to life with yellow-punched paper information alerting them to a story. When it was particularly important a bell would ring telling the newsroom to act fast.
“I rushed to the dam which was familiar to me as I studied at RAU (UJ) and worked in the vicinity.”
He said his job was to bear witness to this unfolding tragedy in order to report on it from an eyewitness perspective.
“The police divers were still trying to haul the school children from the water and it was chaos. The crane arrived to pull the bus out but people were still searching. We did not know at that time exactly how many had been on the bus that day.”
He remembers children receiving CPR from people desperate to resuscitate them but ‘unfortunately many did not survive’.
“The barrier that is there now was not there at the time. There was a small railing which was no protection to the bus which went off course. Only after this dreadful event did proper barriers go up along the bridge.”
Being a journalist in those days meant, ‘we saw a lot of violence and horror and were somewhat used to it’. He says he took notes and photos in a matter-of-fact way and returned to the office. “Only when I saw a colleague crying did the enormity of the human tragedy hit me, and it hit me hard. I’ll never forget that.”
Van Niekerk also covered the funeral at Westpark Cemetery where most of the children were buried in a mass ceremony. “It was overwhelmingly sad with so many broken people saying goodbye to loved ones. You sometimes feel as a journalist that you are intruding in intensely private moments.”
“To this day it makes me quite emotional to think about all the children who died that day in such a terrible way.”
Van Niekerk lives in Cape Town and has become a news film producer and editor.
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