A moving truck driver in South Africa has given new meaning to the phrase “it was not my day,” except somehow, miraculously, it kind of was. Courage Ncube, a 34-year-old removal driver, was doing his job on a Sunday evening near Cape Town when the brakes on his Toyota pickup truck gave out completely on a steep mountain road. What followed was one of the most jaw-dropping survival stories to come out of South Africa in recent memory, and fortunately for the rest of us, the whole thing was captured on CCTV.
The incident happened at around 6:30 p.m. on Sunday in Misty Cliffs, a small coastal hamlet on the Cape Peninsula about 25 miles south of Cape Town. Ncube was hauling a client’s belongings when the truck began accelerating uncontrollably down the steep incline, the brake pedal slamming straight to the floor with zero resistance. Two colleagues were riding in the truck bed when the situation turned terrifying. Both men screamed and jumped off. Ncube, on the other hand, had nowhere to go. He held onto the wheel and braced for whatever came next.
What came next was a lot. The truck barreled into a solid stone wall at around 50 mph, smashing through cemented rock boulders that lined the bend of the road. The vehicle then launched off the road and nose-dived onto the tarmac below, flipping onto its roof before the momentum rolled it back upright onto all four wheels. By any measure of physics and common sense, that should have been the end of the story. It was not.
Seconds after the truck came to rest, the driver’s door opened and Ncube stepped out, appearing entirely unhurt. No broken bones. No lacerations. He reportedly did not have a single scratch on him. Viewers watching the viral CCTV footage have been struggling to process it ever since.
What the CCTV Footage Actually Shows
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The security camera footage that has since spread across social media captures the entire sequence in stomach-dropping detail. You can see the truck gaining speed as it heads toward a sharp 45-degree bend, clearly out of control. The two men in the back are visible jumping to safety before the vehicle rams into the rock wall and disappears over the edge.
What is perhaps the most nerve-wracking detail in the footage is not even the crash itself. A Toyota Corolla is seen passing through the exact landing zone just four seconds before Ncube’s truck comes down. Four seconds. Had that car been moving any slower or the truck gone over any sooner, the outcome could have been catastrophic for multiple people. That near-miss alone deserves its own quiet moment of reflection.
The Driver Speaks Out
Ncube described the experience in the kind of plain, honest language that makes a story hit even harder. He said he was simply doing his job, helping his boss move a client from one house to another, when the road’s steep descent turned deadly. He acknowledged the road was dangerously steep and said once he lost the brakes, there was nothing he could do but hold on.
His most poignant comment was about his truck. He described the now-demolished pickup as his only means of earning a living. Despite surviving a crash that would be the final scene in most action movies, his immediate concern was how he would continue to support himself and work without it. His gratitude for being alive was genuine, but the practical reality of losing his livelihood was not lost on him.
The Community Steps In
The residents of Misty Cliffs did not just watch the footage and move on. Jon Kerr, a retired 66-year-old who serves as treasurer of the Misty Cliffs Village Association, said the community immediately rallied around Ncube. Residents agreed to set up a BackaBuddy fundraising campaign, the South African equivalent of a GoFundMe, to help him replace his truck and get back to work.
Kerr noted that Ncube’s survival was nothing short of miraculous and that the community wanted to make sure a good outcome turned into a full recovery for the driver, not just physically but financially. He also added, with some understatement, that the crash had been the only topic of conversation in the village since it happened. The gap left in the rock boulder wall where the truck broke through has been temporarily filled with sandbags while a permanent repair is arranged.
What Drivers Can Learn From This Incident
Brake failure on steep mountain roads is not a freak occurrence reserved for dramatic movie sequences. It is a documented risk, particularly for vehicles that are heavily loaded or operating in hilly terrain, and one that every driver should know how to handle before they ever find themselves in that situation.
When brakes fail completely, the instinct to panic is understandable but counterproductive. Drivers are generally advised to downshift immediately to use engine braking as a way to slow the vehicle, pump the brake pedal rapidly in case there is any remaining hydraulic pressure, and look for an escape route such as a gravel runoff lane, a flat open area, or even a gradual uphill incline if one is available. Steering into a guardrail or embankment, while damaging, can also be a preferable outcome to going completely off-road.
A South African Police spokesperson who commented on the incident made the point plainly: the Cape Peninsula is mountainous, and anyone driving through it needs to make sure their brakes are in proper working condition. It sounds obvious. Ncube’s case is a reminder of what happens when that basic maintenance step gets skipped, overlooked, or neglected. Checking brake fluid levels, watching for sponginess in the pedal, and having brakes inspected regularly are small habits that can have enormous consequences on roads like these.
Ncube survived through some combination of luck, physics, and the structural integrity of that Toyota. Most people do not get that combination twice.