I’m on holiday in South Africa and I’ve hired a car to take me on a three-week triangular route around the southern tip of the country. Starting in Cape Town I’ll travel east along the coast road known as the Garden Route, then up into the Little Karroo and finally back down again into Cape Town.

It’s the year after the football world cup, so the country is spotless and possibly in the best condition it’s ever been. The Pound is strong, the Rand is weak, the sun is shining and I can’t wait to get going.

The first few days have been amazing so far. I’m on a real high. The sights have been great and with the favourable sterling conversion rate, everything just seems so cheap. Wherever we’ve been so far we’ve checked into our accommodation and asked the owners for the best restaurant in town, knowing we can easily afford it. We’ve been eating some of the best food we’ve ever eaten and washing it down with some of the finest wine on the planet and it’s rarely cost more than about £30 for the both of us. Sometimes much less.

So far we’ve done some ziplining, taken a boat trip up the Storms River, relaxed on some amazing beaches, bungee jumped from Gouritz Bridge and last night did one of the coolest things I’ve ever done, having taken a couple of fully grown cheetahs out for a sunset walk at a big-cat rehabilitation centre near Plettenburg.

Life is sweet.

It’s midday and we’re slowly making our way along the Garden Route towards our next stop, Port Elizabeth, where we will have a base for two nights while we visit a couple of game reserves just outside the city.

The main road on the Garden Route is a pretty good condition two-lane motorway and most of the time you rarely see another vehicle at all other than when you’re approaching any city along the way. You still have to keep your eyes open at all times mind, what with dogs, gazelles and in particular baboons that can run out into the road. The other thing I was warned about before coming, was to watch out for locals crossing the road. Pedestrians crossing a motorway in South Africa, unfortunately, is commonplace and with many of the poorer communities suffering from alcohol and substance abuse you have to be extra vigilant when you see anyone standing at the side of the road. There are even stories of many poor people actually throwing themselves in the road on purpose with a view to taking people to court, in the hope of trying to extort money. So sad, but it’s happened many times in this country, so much so that locals may even tell you that if you are ever involved in such a car crash with an individual that it’s probably best to just drive away, rather than run the risk of being dealt some rough justice for a crime that wasn’t your fault, then spend the rest of your life paying for it.

This was especially on my mind every time I saw someone standing at the side of the road, so we kept our speed under the speed limit and a careful watch for anything at the side of the road, at all times.

As we cruise along, chatting about the incredible cheetah sundowner the night before, we see a car up ahead of us on the highway, which we slowly caught up with to overtake on the outside, still within the speed limit. My other half, Tanja, calmly warns me that there is a black woman on the left-hand side of the road, stood still, looking in our direction as we drive towards her. We see her and she sees us. Both Tanja and I softly mutter to ourselves as we get closer and closer to both her and the other car on the road ‘…. stay there lady ….. doooon’t move ….. that’s it ……. stay riiiiight there …..’. Then, literally at the absolute worst possible moment, this huge black woman, surely 30 stone at best, decides to make a run for it across the road, right in front of both us and the car we were in the process of overtaking. The car in the left lane, like myself, jams on his brakes and swerves to avoid her, him moving to the left and me to the right. He misses the woman by inches, but as we swerve to the right towards the grassy central reservation, she slams into the side of our car, right on the passenger side window, making a huge bang as she bounces off our side.

….. everything seems to be in slow-motion ……

I’m fighting with the steering wheel so as to not roll the whole car, trying to reduce my speed and stop as quick as possible, but I’m on the grassy central reservation now and the wheels are just spinning and sliding everywhere. I eventually gain control of the car and bring it to a halt. I turn off the engine and ask Tanja if she’s alright. She is, but we’re both clearly in shock and hyperventilating.

We’ve come to stop on the central reservation, right across from a small shantytown of corrugated-roof huts. I look in the rear-view mirror to see where the woman we just hit has ended up and can see her sitting upright in the middle of the highway. I’m relieved to see she looks ok, but all I can think is ‘what are you doing you stupid woman, get out of the road!!!’

Faces start to appear from the shantytown across the road and the relief from seeing the woman seemingly ok suddenly changes to worry for our own safety. What if that woman we just hit is the mother, the sister, the daughter, the wife of one of these people now making their way over the road? All of a sudden I heard those words of advice about driving away from a road accident in South Africa ringing in my head. We suddenly had to make a decision we never thought we’d have to make, and we had to make it real quick as more and more people started to appear from across the road and approach our car. An internal fight of ‘what’s the right thing to do’ plays out in your head. Do we protect ourselves and all our belongings from a potentially rowdy and dangerous crowd or help the woman in the road?

The decision was easy in the end.

I tell Tanja to stay in the car, to keep the doors locked and to beep the horn if she feels like she’s in any danger. It was then I notice that the other vehicle that was involved in the incident is parked up on the other side of the road, roughly halfway between me and the woman sitting in the road. Hoping the male driver was a local with a mobile phone, I ran over to him thinking he could call the police and if need be an ambulance too. As I approached, I could see he was already on the phone, so at that point I ran over to help the woman sitting in the road.

As I got closer, I could hear that she was upset. She was crying, almost like a child would, and shouting in her own language, but I just couldn’t understand why she didn’t get up and move herself to the side of the road, out of harm’s way. The strong smell of alcohol suddenly hit me as I got closer, it was clear she was very intoxicated. And then ….. I saw exactly why she just sat there and hadn’t got up……

Her leg was off.

With just a small slither of pink flesh seemingly keeping her lower half of her leg attached to the top half, it was apparent the impact had ripped her leg in two. There was surprisingly little blood. She shouted something at me, but I told her I couldn’t understand, to which she then said ‘Where is my hat? Get my hat!’ A strange thing to say I thought with her leg hanging off, but I guess this was just another sign of how drunk she was, caring more about her headwear than her leg. In hindsight, it was probably a good thing she was so drunk as it seems she was quite anesthetized.

Back in the heat of the moment, other than direct any approaching traffic around her, I really didn’t know what else I could do. The emergency services were hopefully on their way and with the best of faith, there was no way I would have been able to move her somewhat enormous carcass to the side of the road. Not least with her leg hanging on by a thread.

At this point I heard a car horn sounding; it was our car, surrounded by people from the shantytown. I ran back down the road to see what I can only describe as a bunch of pissed-up, drugged-up zombies encircling our car. It was very intimidating and even though a few cars had stopped to help out, the thought that something could kick off at any moment was a real worry. It was the middle of the day and these guys were so out of it they could barely walk. Some of them were just stumbling around and falling over, then knocking on the window to get Tanja’s attention. I told her to just stay in the car.

It was all starting to get a bit ugly, but thankfully the police and ambulance turned up, just in time to calm things down. With Tanja now safe and the black woman being taken care of, I ran back over to the driver of the other vehicle, thinking at some point the police are no doubt going to want statements from any witnesses. This man was the only other person that could confirm that it was this woman that had ran out in front of us and not us that had been driving dangerously.

He then tells me he’s an off-duty, local police officer, which was absolute music to my ears. Not only was he a witness, but he was a reliable witness. I suddenly realise what trouble I could have been in had I decided to leave the scene of an accident and breathed a sigh of relief that we hadn’t done a runner. He gave me his name and number and then a few much-needed words of comfort. He says ‘Gary, please try not to worry about this ok, unfortunately, this sort of thing happens all the time in South Africa. So much so, there is a road accident fund to protect and help tourists involved in road accidents like this as well as locals innocently injured. I can witness for you that this woman ran straight out in front of us and we had little or no chance of avoiding her. You’ll be fine.’

Those were so the words I needed to hear at that moment of time. But then he totally ruined it with this next gut-wrenching sentence. In his strong Afrikaans accent, he says ‘But Gary, I’m afraid I have to tell you something. If this lady dies, regardless of whether you are culpable or not, in this country it is deemed a homicide, and you will be arrested and imprisoned until the court case, which could be anything up to six months or more.’

Well, my jaw could have hit the fucking pavement. No doubt white as a sheet, I tell Tanja the bad news and then make ourselves known to the two black police officers who had now attended the scene.

It took about six people to pick that poor woman up she was so heavy, but once she had been put in the ambulance, we were told to follow the police officers in our slightly battered car, to the nearest police station a few miles away, called Green Bush. To think only thirty minutes earlier we were on such a high, having just had an incredible 24 hours in Plett. And now my whole life was in the balance, depending on the fate of that woman who had ran out in front of us. If she survives, then fingers crossed, we should be ok too. If she dies, then the prospect of being stuck in a South African jail for six months waiting for my trial was something I could barely bring myself to consider.

We arrived at Green Bush Police Station and were presented to a presumably more senior black police officer that had clearly been assigned our case. Fairly quickly I worked out that English was far from his first language. Maybe his third or fourth. As I sat there, I hoped that this nightmare of a day would soon be over, but unfortunately, that was far from the truth.

The officer sits down and with his poor English, the conversation starts:-

Police officer:    Where …. did this …. accident ……….. happen?

Me:                        I don’t know the name of the place.

Police officer:    (with a look of confusion) You do not know?!

Me:                        No, I’m a tourist.

Police officer:    (shaking his head with contempt and reading the next question on his form) What was ….. the name … of the wo-man you hit?

Me:                        I don’t know.

Police officer:    (with shock and even more contempt) You do not know the name of this wo-man?!

Me:                        No, of course I don’t. I had just run her over and her leg was hanging off. I was hardly going to start asking her for her name was I?

In my head, I imagined standing over this poor woman, asking her to spell her name as I wrote it down on a piece of paper. ‘Sorry, could you say that again, please? Is it Ingazungu Bingadango or Inzagangu Bungadingu? Yes, yes I know it hurts, but could you just check my spelling here please, the police will want to know’.

Suddenly realising how critical everything I say to this easily agitated policeman was, I took out some paper I had in my little backpack and started making notes of my own. I could see that this policeman was from the Khosa tribe, the tribe that use clicks in their own language when they talk. I wrote down his name on my piece of paper which he notices and in a pissed-off sort of way says ‘why are you writing my name?!’ I shit myself and explain that I am just making notes. He continues to shake his head and fill out his own form.

This is not going well, but I try to keep my chin up by remembering that I did absolutely nothing wrong here and that I have a really good witness. And as long as the woman survives, we should be ok. The conversation continues:-

Police officer:    Were there any …. witness-es?

Me:                        Yes, you have the telephone number of an off-duty policeman who saw the whole thing.

Police officer:    No….. I do not.

Me:                       (suddenly panicking) Yes you do! I gave the attending police officers his telephone number when we came here. I saw them give the piece of paper to you!!! Please don’t say you’ve lost it?!

Police officer:    (looking confused again) No, I do not have it.

My heart sinks. We are fucked if he’s lost that telephone number. He stands up and starts walking around the office behind him, looking under files, books and folders. With blood quickly draining from my face, he eventually comes back to our little booth with the missing piece of paper in his hands. Seizing the opportunity to make another copy for myself, I write down the Afrikaans policeman’s contact details on my own notes sheet and wait for the colour to come back to my now ghostly white face.

After about half an hour of constant head-shaking, where he had successfully made me feel like a convicted murderer the whole time, he tells us that we will all have to go back to the scene of the accident in order to reconstruct what had happened and to take some measurements for the investigation. I made it very clear that this would be very difficult as we do not know the area. Not least with the two Keystone Kops that had originally attended the crash site having long since disappeared without giving any information at all to the investigating team before they left. Brilliant.

All I could do was drive slowly back along the road, away from Green Bush, and try to recognise the corrugated rooves of the little shantytown where it had all happened. We eventually found it and I then tried to point out roughly where everyone had been and how things had unfolded, with the police taking measurements, notes and photographs. We even found the small pool of blood where the woman had once sat.

Once they had got all the information they wanted, we followed them back to the police station one last time and was told that all the information would be evaluated and put before a judge in a few days’ time. They would also contact the Afrikaans policeman for his official witness statement and make sure it all tied into our version of events. They would hold our passports until that time the judge had made his decision and we were not allowed to leave the general area of Port Elizabeth, with a further strict order that we were to call the police station every day to check-in.

We told them that we had reservations to go to two game reserves on the other side of the city which they said would be fine, as long as we remembered to call every evening.

We checked into our little guest house in Port Elizabeth a short while later and sensing that we were both a bit upset, the female owner heard how our day had played out before turning up on her doorstep. She was lovely and felt so bad that this had happened to us and later that evening she came knocking on our door to tell us that she had been talking on the phone with some big-wig legal friend of hers about what had happened to us and started giving us all sorts of kind advice as to what we should do and not do. Best of all was that this big-time lawyer friend of hers had told her that if things went tits up, he would come with us in person to the police station and if need be even represent us in court, pro-bono. What lovely people there are in the world.

Later that evening we drowned our misery with a good few stiff drinks and pondered the day’s events. Swinging from ‘anger’ that this stupid woman had ran out in front of us, risking everyone’s lives. To ‘relief’ that she at least hadn’t hit the front of the car and flown through the windscreen, as we surely would have died on the spot. To ‘pity’ that she lived in such abject poverty and had an alcohol problem. And poor Tanja was being haunted with visions of the woman’s face as she hit her passenger side window and then disappearing down the car.

We hadn’t even considered what was going to happen when we tell the car rental company that their vehicle has been damaged or how much it was going to cost. As far as they were concerned, of course, it didn’t matter whose fault it was, it wasn’t their fault and the woman sure as shit wasn’t going to pay for the repairs. After many conflicting thoughts and emotions, we eventually decided that with it only being Day 3 of our holiday, we simply have to get on with it. And of course, pray that the woman survives!

We spend the next two days at Addo Elephant Park and Schotia Private Game Reserve, which really helped take our minds off things, if only briefly. During a coffee break on the first day, we were telling some young backpackers what had happened to us who said they were one of the cars that had driven past while the woman was sat in the road. Mmmm …. that was us.

Back at our guesthouse in Port Elizabeth, and having called the Green Bush police station, the lovely lady owner said she would follow with us up to see the lead investigator who had asked us to come visit. Apparently, a judge had made a decision regarding our case and we needed to be there in person to hear it.

All sorts of things start going through your head. Do they want us to be there just so they can give us our passports back? Or is it so they can arrest me on the spot and throw me in the clinker?! Either way, I’m bricking it.

Tanja, our landlady and I are shown to a room upstairs where a white, Afrikaans, female police officer eventually walks in and introduces herself. Her friendly demeanour settles my nerves immediately. In her strong Afrikaans accent she says ‘Mr. Proctor, I am so sorry this has happened to you here on your holiday. We have talked to the male officer who witnessed the accident and he has corroborated your recollection of events and indeed that this was not at all your fault. The woman involved was a 64-year-old, mother of 12, whose blood-alcohol level was through the roof when they tested her. She is stable and expected to make a full recovery. No blame will be put on you and you may now go about your business and continue with your holiday. I advise you take a copy of all these documents I have here, as paperwork tends to disappear in South Africa and I do not want this person to come back into your life in ten years’ time, armed with a lawyer, looking for money’. She looks up from her papers and gives me a deadly serious stare and says ‘This does happen!’ And with that, I take a copy of everything she has and thank her for her time.

I take the damaged vehicle to the car rental company and they change it for a new one. It’s annoying, but I end up paying a few hundred quid for the damage. On the grand scale of things, it could have been a whole lot worse. Literally a split-second later on the brakes and she’d have flown straight through the windscreen, killing us both.

I’ll take it.

The first day or so was a bit nervy in the car, especially when we saw anybody anywhere near the side of the road. But, as they say, when you fall off your horse, the best thing to do is get straight back on it again. So we drove and drove and drove. And in the end, we did let ourselves enjoy the rest of the holiday, ending with a magical few days in Cape Town.

Years later we look back at that time in South Africa with only fond memories and are so grateful it wasn’t overshadowed by the accident on that fateful day.

And thus far anyway, I haven’t heard from Mrs. Bingadungu’s legal team.