Rescue personnel have been scrambled to the scene of a passenger bus accident in the rural Eastern Cape which has claimed the lives of at least 21 people.
Photographs from the scene show the bus, which was carrying 79 people, lying on its side in heavy vegetation at the bottom of a gorge some 200 metres below the road.
Eastern Cape Health Department spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo says the bus went off a gravel road between Mazeppa Bay and Cebe early on Monday morning, plunging down the steep gorge.
The driver was among those killed.
Kupelo says the bus was transporting mostly elderly people who were on their way to Butterworth to receive their social grants and do some shopping when the accident happened.
