Ten men have been killed and five others seriously to critically injured after a fully loaded minibus taxi lost control around a bend and crashed into a tree on the MR385 in Cato Ridge, KwaZulu-Natal.
The horrific collision happened at about 17:00 on Wednesday, 7 October 2026, prompting a major emergency response involving paramedics, firefighters and the Durban metro police search-and-rescue unit.
According to a preliminary report from the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Transport, the taxi driver lost control of the vehicle as it negotiated a bend. The taxi then left the roadway and struck a tree.
ALS Paramedics said its crews arrived to find what it described as “total chaos and carnage”.
The minibus was fully loaded when it left the road. Several occupants died at the scene, while others were trapped inside the wreckage with serious injuries.
ALS Paramedics spokesperson Garrith Jamieson said additional advanced life-support resources were sent to the crash site.
“Immediately, more advanced life support ambulances together with advanced life support paramedics and the eThekwini Fire Department were dispatched to assist,” he said.
The scale of the impact meant that emergency workers had to use specialist rescue equipment to reach some of the occupants.
The eThekwini Fire Department and the Durban Metro Police Service Search and Rescue Unit used the Jaws of Life and other hydraulic equipment to cut some of the deceased free from the wreckage.
Jamieson said five survivors sustained injuries ranging from serious to critical.
“I can confirm that five occupants from the taxi have sustained various injuries ranging from serious to critical, and once they were stabilised on the scene, they were then rushed through to nearby hospitals for the urgent care that they required,” he said.
The injured passengers were taken to nearby hospitals after paramedics stabilised them at the scene. Their identities and medical conditions had not been released at the time of the initial reports.
Jamieson said 10 men were declared dead at the scene.
The road remained closed on Wednesday evening while emergency personnel continued working at the crash site. The scene was still active, and motorists were warned to avoid the affected section of the MR385.
The exact events leading up to the collision remain unknown.
Investigators will need to establish why the taxi lost control, whether the vehicle was travelling at an unsafe speed and whether road, weather or mechanical conditions played a role.
The damage to the taxi, the position of the vehicle and the condition of the bend will form part of the investigation. Officials may also examine whether the taxi was overloaded, although the vehicle was described as fully loaded rather than a formal finding of overloading.
The crash comes during a particularly difficult period for KwaZulu-Natal, where another deadly minibus taxi collision claimed 13 lives in Mtubatuba just a week earlier.
That crash involved a minibus taxi and a truck. The repeated loss of life has placed renewed attention on passenger safety, driver behaviour, vehicle conditions and the risks faced by people who depend on taxis for daily transport.
KwaZulu-Natal Transport MEC Siboniso Duma assigned a road-safety team to help locate the families of the deceased and injured passengers.
The team is working with the local taxi association to identify those involved and ensure that relatives are notified.
KwaZulu-Natal Transport Department spokesperson Ndabezinhle Sibiya said the department was saddened by the deaths.
The formal identification process is expected to take time, particularly because several people died in a high-impact crash and some bodies had to be removed from the wreckage using specialised equipment.
Families of the injured will also need to be contacted while relatives are directed to the hospitals where survivors were taken.
Authorities generally withhold the names of deceased people until next of kin have been formally informed. No names had been released at the time of the initial report.
The family-notification process is one of the first priorities after a disaster of this scale. It allows officials to provide accurate information and prevents relatives from learning about the deaths through unverified social-media reports.
The crash also presents difficult questions for the taxi industry and road-safety authorities.
A fully loaded minibus carrying passengers on a route through Cato Ridge can become extremely dangerous when the driver loses control. A collision with a fixed object such as a tree leaves little room for the vehicle to absorb the impact, increasing the risk of multiple fatalities and entrapments.
The use of the Jaws of Life at the scene indicates the severity of the wreckage, but it does not by itself establish what caused the crash.
That will be determined through the official investigation, which may include statements from survivors and witnesses, inspection of the taxi, road measurements and an assessment of the driver’s actions before the collision.
The five injured passengers are now receiving hospital care. Some are reported to be in critical condition, and their families are likely to face a period of uncertainty as doctors monitor the extent of their injuries.
The deceased passengers’ families are meanwhile being asked to wait for official notification while officials work through the identification process.
For the emergency crews who attended the crash, the scene involved both a mass-casualty response and a complex rescue operation. Paramedics had to treat the survivors while firefighters and search-and-rescue personnel worked to free people trapped inside the taxi.
The response required coordination between ALS Paramedics, the eThekwini Fire Department and the Durban Metro Police Service Search and Rescue Unit.
The MR385 remained closed as officials processed the scene and cleared the wreckage. The closure was necessary to protect emergency workers, preserve evidence and allow the recovery operation to continue safely.
Transport authorities are expected to monitor the investigation and consider whether any additional road-safety measures are required in the area.
For now, the official account remains preliminary: a fully loaded taxi lost control around a bend, left the road and crashed into a tree.
Ten men died at the scene, five others were taken to hospital with serious to critical injuries, and families across KwaZulu-Natal were left waiting for answers.
The Cato Ridge crash is the second major taxi tragedy to strike the province within a week, adding to calls for urgent action to reduce deaths on KwaZulu-Natal’s roads.