Newlands Primary School students remember accident victim teacher

By Elvis Dumba

Newlands Primary School students took time to remember their late teacher, Diana Marowa, who died in a road accident near the school in May.

The accident involving two ZUPCO buses which had a head-on collision about 400 meters from the school at the 101 km peg along Harare-Chirundu road claimed four lives, including both drivers, who all died on the spot.

The students from Newlands Primary School lay wreaths at the accident scene in remembrance of their educator.

The accident, according to the Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe, was due to human error after one of the drivers attempted to overtake a haulage truck at a blind rise resulting in the buses that were travelling in opposite directions getting involved in a head-on collision.

The late teacher, Marowa, was about to disembark from the bus about 300 meters away when tragedy struck. She was with some of her students on their way to the school on the morning of the tragedy. They were plunged into mourning after seeing her lifeless body at the accident scene.

“We took the opportunity in leading these students in remembering one of our late staff members who died in the accident as part of the healing process from grief since most of the students were really affected by her death. The majority of the students pass through the scene where the accident occurred. Some students saw their late teacher before she was covered as the tragedy happened when they were coming to school,” Tariro Zezai a teacher at the school told this publication.

“We had to take the students through grief counselling for some days as they were affected by the death of their teacher with some having their school work affected,” he said.

Tinei Charakupa, a parent to one of the students, said after the accident, the child resisted attending classes.

“My child initially refused to attend classes after the accident saying they no longer had a teacher and it took some days before she got composed again but her school work deteriorated for some time so I think the memorial is important that they find closure and get comforted,” he said.

Although the scene where the accident occurred has become a black spot, the nearby community had not been directly affected by the accidents with the Zupco buses accident making a personal impact on the community.

Human error has remained one of the biggest contributing factors to road carnage.

Meanwhile, the students were also taken through pedestrian road safety tips as some of the students cross the highway when attending school with hit-and-run accidents on pedestrians, especially in high-density areas being common with both pedestrians and motorists ignoring basic road rules.