Bring back our humanity

If you’re still recovering from the whirlwind of the previous year, you are not alone. SHARMINI NAIDOO says that recent months have exposed troubling gaps in how we approach road safety and collective responsibility in South Africa. 

At the start of the year, we saw severe weather conditions sweep across South Africa and other parts of the world. On the home front, this prompted the declaration of a National State of Disaster in four provinces by the National Disaster Management Centre (NDMC), following widespread flooding across parts of the country.

The severe weather, including heavy rainfall, strong winds, lightning and flooding, affected Limpopo, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape and North West. It resulted in loss of life, significant damage to infrastructure and property, environmental degradation, displacement of communities, disruption to schooling and agricultural activities and closures in parts of the Kruger National Park.

According to the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, the severe rainfall, alongside fires in the Western Cape and the outbreak of Foot-and-Mouth Disease, “underscored the need for collective action”, which resulted in this immediate intervention. That same need for collective action is painfully clear on our roads.

What the road safety data tells us

Since Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy came into office, she has been looking for ways to bring order to our transport system – from combating widespread corruption by her officials to the ever-increasing problem of road safety.

Earlier this year, she announced preliminary results of the 2025/26 Festive Season Road Safety Campaign and the overall road safety outcomes for 2025. The results indicated a 5% reduction in both fatalities and crashes for this year’s festive season, compared to the same period in the previous year. A total of 1,427 fatalities and 1,172 crashes were recorded during the last festive season. This was the lowest number of festive season crashes recorded in five years, although the number of fatalities was the same as in the 2023/24 festive season.

Based on the statistics, it would seem that festive season crashes and fatalities increase once travellers have reached their destinations and are engaging in festivities, rather than during the peak travel periods. 

Many of the crashes happened over the weekend, between 19:00 and 21:00 and between midnight and 01:00. They involved collisions with pedestrians, hit and runs, single vehicle overturns and head-on collisions. The highest numbers of pedestrian fatalities were reported in the City of Cape Town, the City of Johannesburg, eThekwini, Nkangala District and the City of Tshwane.

According to the minister, combined law enforcement officers conducted 1,632 roadblocks in which 1.8 million vehicles were stopped and checked over the festive season. More than 450,000 traffic fines were issued and 525 people were arrested for excessive speeding. Roadblocks and vehicle inspections targeted roadworthiness, driver fitness and licensing.

A total of 173,695 drivers were tested for driving under the influence of alcohol and 8,561 of these tested positive – a 144% increase from last year. The highest alcohol reading was recorded in KwaZulu-Natal, where one motorist recorded a breath alcohol content 14 times above the legal alcohol limit. The worst speedster was arrested in the Northern Cape, where he was clocked at 222km/h in a 120km/h zone.

Furthermore, officers arrested 89 motorists for attempting to bribe traffic officers to avoid arrest.

Zero tolerance

The minister has also made a controversial call for zero tolerance for drinking and driving. She announced the Department of Transport’s (DoT’s) intention to amend Section 65 of the National Road Traffic Act to lower the drunk driving limit to zero, as she felt that the legislation was “totally unacceptable with limits set decades ago”.

Per the current legislation, it is a criminal offence for general drivers to exceed a blood alcohol concentration of 0.05g/100ml, or 0.24mg/1,000ml in breath. Professional drivers can’t exceed 0.02g/100ml of blood or 0.10mg/1,000ml of breath. The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport has also provided its support to the Minister to ban any level of alcohol consumption for drivers.

Putting kids first

The horrific crash that involved a head-on collision between a scholar transport minibus and a truck that claimed the lives of 14 learners in Vanderbijlpark, Gauteng, was allegedly caused by the reckless and negligent driving of the minibus driver, who also did not have a valid permit. This has prompted the minister to instruct traffic law enforcement agencies, including the RTMC National Traffic Police, to intensify their law enforcement operations with a specific focus on scholar transport throughout the country.

The minister also urged all spheres of government dealing with scholar transport to adhere to the recently reviewed National Road Safety Strategy (NRSS), which has been a long time coming. It requires regular vehicle roadworthiness tests for all scholar transport vehicles, whether contracted or not with the respective departments. The NRSS also addresses the importance of consistent road safety education, awareness and training for operators, drivers and learners – particularly regarding emergency exit procedures.

The National Learner Transport Policy – aimed at tackling crucial issues relating to the safety of learner transport and access to reliable scholar transportation – is also in the long-overdue process of being reviewed.

With such a high-profile incident, the government is once again under immense pressure to do something.

While there may be some changes in the selection processes of contracts and a renewed focus by the respective departments on the compliance of service providers, permits and roadworthiness, will the authorities really be able to bring about the change needed to provide safe transport to the 2.8 million scholars requiring transport?

Operators themselves may well be facing their own challenges in rendering these services, although there is absolutely no excuse for not complying with the law, be it the National Land Transport Act or the National Road Traffic Act. Sure, law enforcement should also be doing their jobs, but we cannot expect the authorities to be Big Brother and look over our shoulders every minute of the day.

Shared accountability

It was interesting to see a poll by eNCA near the end of January, on the South African Morning Live show, that indicated just 4% of viewers believed the government should be held accountable for scholar transport. Meanwhile, 23% believed that it should be transporters, 2% believed that it should be the parents and 71% believed that all of the above should be accountable. This, I like to believe, is a sign of a shift in consciousness.

Bringing back our humanity

At its core, road safety is not about fines, policies or prosecutions. It is about people. No amount of enforcement, compensation or punishment can restore a life lost or heal a family shattered by a preventable tragedy.

If there is one lesson recent events should leave us with, it is this: progress begins when we remember our shared humanity. Our roads, and our society, will only become safer when each of us accepts that the responsibility does not belong to someone else, but to all of us.