NZer in hospital after fatal bus crash in S Africa

New Zealand speed skating coach Bill Begg was today recovering in a South African hospital after being involved in a bus crash that killed three fellow passengers.

Begg and a party of skaters and coaches were on their way back to Cape Town from a coaching session when their bus blew a tyre at 1am local time and went over a bank.

The injured were taken to different hospitals, and Begg was transported to Bloemfontein, about 130km from the crash site.

"I've got broken fingers and quite a lot of abrasions, mainly caused by tangling with a barbed wire fence when I was trying to revive a bus driver," he told Newstalk ZB.

Begg, 59, of Timaru, had been on a coaching tour of Singapore and South Africa.

He said it was pitch black at the time of the accident and it took about an hour for emergency services to arrive at the scene while other traffic just passed by.

"In South Africa, no one stops," he said.

"We needed blankets and everyone was freezing. Guys like me just had to forget we had injuries."

He said he was due to leave South Africa at the weekend, but would now stay on to attend the funerals for those who had died in the incident.

He praised the staff at the New Zealand High Commission for the speed in which they contacted his relatives after they heard about the news.

South African police said the three dead were South Africans, while 22 other people were injured.

Police spokeswoman Elsa Gerber said the accident occurred early on Monday (local time) on a national highway in the Free State province more than 500km south-west of Johannesburg.

The passengers included nationals from Italy and the Netherlands.

South Africa's roads are among the most dangerous in the world and many foreign visitors have been killed on them in the past.

In 1999, 27 elderly British tourists died when their bus ploughed off the road as it descended a mountain pass near the eastern highland town of Lydenburg.

- NZPA