# Death toll in South Africa school minibus crash rises to 14 as driver faces murder charge
Event date: 2026-01-22
The death toll from a school transport crash in South Africa's Gauteng province rose to 14 on January 22, 2026, after two teenage girls died from injuries they suffered earlier in the week, according to authorities cited by the Associated Press. The latest deaths intensified scrutiny of a case that had already shocked the country because 12 children died at the scene when the minibus collided with a truck.
The private minibus had been carrying 16 students to primary and high schools south of Johannesburg when the crash happened around 7 a.m. on Monday near Vanderbijlpark, AP reported. Seven people were originally hospitalized: five students, the minibus driver and a passenger in the truck. By Thursday, three of those injured had been discharged, but two female students later died in separate hospitals.
One of the students died at Sebokeng Hospital after being treated in intensive care, while another died at a private hospital, police Lieutenant Colonel Mavela Masondo said in the AP report. Those updates changed the event from a catastrophic school transport collision into one of the deadliest child road disasters in the country in recent memory, with the toll continuing to climb days after the original impact.
The legal response also hardened. AP said the 22-year-old minibus driver, Ayanda Dludla, had initially been expected to face culpable homicide charges, a South African offense comparable to manslaughter. Prosecutors later upgraded the case, and police said he would instead be charged with 14 counts of murder. The report did not set out the full evidentiary basis for that change, but the shift showed authorities were treating the crash as more than a routine traffic case.
The source did not provide a final reconstruction of how the collision occurred, so the verified account is centered on the casualties, the hospital updates and the charging decision. That matters in high-fatality crash cases, where official findings about speed, overtaking, mechanical condition or road layout can take longer than the first round of court action.
What is clear from the AP report is the scale of loss carried by one school run. Fourteen children were dead by January 22, the driver faced murder charges, and families were still processing a tragedy that unfolded first at the roadside and then in hospital wards over the following days. The event date marks not the crash itself, which occurred earlier in the week, but the moment the death toll rose again and the legal stakes surrounding the driver became much more serious.
