Yesterday’s funeral service of three of the 14 pupils who died in a scholar transport accident in Vanderbijlpark, Gauteng, is a reminder of how the culture of lawlessness on our roads has reduced the value of human life, including that of children. What should have been a routine journey to school ended in catastrophe, leaving families shattered and communities asking questions that have been posed after far too many similar tragedies. At the centre of this disaster is a scholar transport system that operates largely unregulated.
For thousands of families, especially working-class households, private taxi scholar transport is a necessity. It is therefore unacceptable that the system remains one of the least monitored segments of the public transport sector, characterised by poorly maintained vehicles, questionable licensing compliance and weak enforcement by authorities, who only seem to act decisively after lives have been lost. The Vanderbijlpark crash did not occur in a vacuum.
It happened in a context where road safety laws exist largely on paper, and where responsibility for protecting children is outsourced to operators who are seldom subjected to rigorous inspection. Overloaded vehicles, reckless driving behaviour and mechanically unroadworthy vehicles have become normalised risks in the daily commute of pupils. That normalisation is itself an indictment of the state.
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While investigations will rightly focus on the immediate cause of the accident and potential criminal liability, there is a danger in reducing this tragedy to individual wrongdoing alone. The uncomfortable truth is that government departments responsible for transport, education and law enforcement have long been aware of the deficiencies in scholar transport but have failed to act with the urgency the issue demands. The deaths in Vanderbijlpark should not be allowed to become just another grim statistic.
They must serve as a turning point. It is time to reverse the reality that the state only responds after tragedy strikes, while road users, including children, continue to pay with their lives.
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