Being the busiest time of day on Walter Sisulu Street, Ms Cooke was not alone, “My heart sank for the people in front of me,” she says.

Ms Cooke just finished her school run at Middelburg Primary School, with four children in the vehicle heading to Dennesig, to drop off two of the car-pooling passengers, before heading to her house in Kanonkop.

She thought something was amiss when she saw cinder blocks blocking one lane down Walter Sisulu Street.

With Ms Cooke’s sight blocked by the taxi in front of her, her eldest daughter, in the passenger seat, had a clear line of sight, alerting her mom to the rioting mass of striking municipal employees attacking a taxi about a block ahead of them with bricks and bottles.

“The next moment all hell broke loose as random people on the sidewalk, who were not part of the main crowd making their way up Walter Sisulu Street toward the municipality, also started throwing bottles and bricks at my car.”

All the vehicles in front of her started making U-turns to flee the approaching danger.
Many did not make it.

“The children in the car were screaming and sobbing that they did not want to die,” a still shook Ms Cooke told www.mobserver.co.za.

One unlucky motorist, caught in the maelstrom, accidentally struck a rioter with his bakkie.

The mob descended onto him, slashing his tyres and demanding he alight the vehicle.
He refused, even as police members surrounded his bakkie.

In a supplied cell phone video, a local resident gives real-time commentary on the bakkie driver’s miraculous escape from serious harm.
The video can be found elsewhere on the site.

“The trauma the children endured will forever haunt me,” Ms Cooke says.