Court Awards Victory to Woman Who Jumped From Moving Train to Escape Knife Attack

On 5 February 2020, 27-year-old Siphosethu Mketo (“Mketo”) was travelling on an evening train from Cape Town to Elsies River. What began as a routine commute descended into terror when three men, who had been smoking drugs and causing disturbances since boarding at Cape Town station, turned violent. According to court testimony, the situation escalated dramatically after the train departed Goodwood station. The assailants confronted a fellow passenger standing next to Mketo near the open carriage doors and demanded his cellphone. When the passenger refused, one of the attackers produced what Mketo described as “a huge knife” and began stabbing him.

The assailants had indicated that she would be their next target. Faced with what she perceived as imminent danger, Mketo made a split-second decision that would change her life. She jumped through the open doors of the moving train. The jump left her with severe injuries including a skull fracture, cerebral contusion, and blunt trauma to her right shoulder, back, and neck. She lost consciousness upon impact and was later found bleeding on the railway tracks. She was taken to hospital where she underwent treatment at both Elsies River and Tygerberg hospitals.

Mketo’s path to justice proved as challenging as her physical recovery. When she filed her lawsuit in September 2020, seeking damages for PRASA’s alleged negligence, the rail operator mounted a vigorous defence. PRASA denied both that she was a legitimate passenger and that any such incident had occurred.

The case initially appeared to face insurmountable obstacles when the trial court dismissed her claim in October 2023. The lower court ruled that Mketo had failed to prove she was even a paying passenger on the train because she did not produce a train ticket. It questioned the credibility of her entire account and suggested the injuries might not have stemmed from a train incident at all. The trial judge had been particularly critical of what he perceived as gaps in Mketo’s evidence. He noted that despite the allegedly serious nature of the incident, she had not provided police reports, ambulance records, or comprehensive medical documentation to support her version of events.

Undeterred, Mketo petitioned the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA), which granted leave for the case to be heard by a Full Bench of the Western Cape High Court. The appeal, heard on 22 January 2025, would ultimately vindicate her persistence. The appeal court found multiple errors in the lower court’s approach, particularly its handling of uncontested evidence and its failure to properly analyse the elements of delictual liability.

“If a point in dispute is left unchallenged in cross-examination, the party calling the witness is entitled to assume that the unchallenged testimony is accepted as correct,” Justice Bhoopchand observed as the court noted that PRASA had failed to challenge Mketo’s evidence that she was a fare-paying passenger. The court found that Mketo had indeed provided proof of her ticket to PRASA and that her status as a legitimate passenger established the necessary contractual relationship between her and the rail operator.

The case presented novel legal questions about the extent of PRASA’s duty of care to passengers and the circumstances under which it could be held liable for injuries sustained in unusual ways. The court examined several previous cases involving passengers injured by open train doors, including the Constitutional Court decision in Mashongwa v PRASA,¹ where a passenger was thrown from a train by criminals. However, Justice Bhoopchand noted that this appeared to be the first case where a passenger had deliberately jumped from a moving train.

Despite the unprecedented nature of the case, the court found that established legal principles still applied. Drawing on the Mashongwa precedent, which emphasised that “when acts of violence are perpetrated while a train is in motion, commuters are virtually trapped,” the court recognised the impossible position facing passengers caught in such situations.

The court systematically worked through the five elements required to establish delictual liability i.e., conduct, wrongfulness, fault (negligence), causation, and damage. The court found that PRASA’s failure to keep the carriage doors closed while the train was in motion constituted wrongful conduct. This built upon established precedent recognising that rail operators owe passengers a duty of care to implement reasonable safety measures.

Perhaps most significantly, the court found that PRASA could reasonably have foreseen that open doors posed a danger to passengers, even if the specific circumstances of Mketo’s case were unusual. The court drew an analogy with the English case of Hughes v Lord Advocate,² and noted that foreseeability does not require prediction of exact circumstances, only the general nature of potential harm. The court then applied the “but-for” test and concluded that Mketo would not have jumped if the doors had been closed.

PRASA had raised several defences, including arguments that Mketo was solely responsible for her injuries and that she had voluntarily assumed the risk by jumping. The court dismissed these contentions. Furthermore, the court also rejected suggestions that Mketo should have avoided the situation by not boarding the train or by alighting at earlier stations. “The suggestion that the Appellant should not have boarded the train or disembarked at any of the deserted stations before she jumped… is incongruent with the realities faced by women in this country,” the court noted.

The ruling has significant implications for passenger rail safety and liability in South Africa, where violent crime on trains remains a persistent problem. It recognises that passengers may face impossible choices when confronted with violence and that rail operators cannot escape liability simply because passengers take extraordinary measures to protect themselves. The case also highlights ongoing challenges in South Africa’s rail system, where inadequate security and mechanical failures continue to endanger passengers.

You can read the full Mketo v PRASA judgement here.

Written by Theo Tembo