The accident involved the collision of a crowded passenger train and an industrial transport carrying tankers full of a highly flammable liquid to a coal mine on the Bulawayo to Victoria Falls line.
Robert Mugabe's state censorship of the media meant that all news reports announced that the disaster was the result of a foreign boycott of Zimbabwean products, which had led to severely limited foreign currency reserves, so that trains were over crowded because motor transport cannot get fuel and that railway equipment is outdated because the repairs need cannot be paid for.
Many news outlets also hinted that the crash may have been the result of sabotage by the rival party in Zimbabwe, Movement for Democratic Change, a stance treated with severe doubt in foreign press articles.
The crash was most likely the result of out-of-date and poorly maintained equipment on the Zimbabwe railway breaking down,[citation needed] which meant that the signal instruction intended to warn the approaching passenger train of the presence of the slow train ahead was never received by the signal and thus never displayed, resulting in the accident.
A group of Lions club members some of whom were rail enthusiasts, travelling for a conference in Victoria Falls were asleep in their bunks at the rear of the train.