Children deserve transport, not Russian roulette

School children are being slaughtered on our country’s roads. This has to stop – now!

Every morning, South African parents perform a ritual of supreme faith. They button school shirts, pack lunchboxes and watch their children climb into minibuses, trusting that the social contract of road safety holds firm. They trust that the vehicle is sound, the driver is competent and the system is functioning.

Yet, with sickening regularity, that promise is shattered by vehicles that hang together by a thread and a prayer, reckless driving and criminal neglect.

More than numbers

The numbers tell a shocking story. According to an excellent article in the Daily Maverick – “How the daily commute for thousands of schoolchildren has become a gamble with death” – more than 800 schoolchildren died in scholar transport-related accidents across South Africa between 2018 and 2022.

But, of course, this is about more than just numbers. Every crash involving scholar transport tears through communities, families and classrooms. Yet the cycle continues with grim predictability: tragedy, outrage, funerals, finger-pointing, anger, investigations, promises made and broken… and then another tragedy.

A gamble with death

The collision in Vanderbijlpark, where 14 learners lost their lives, is the most recent case in point. The Daily Maverickreport paints a harrowing picture, telling the story of Mmaki Josephine Mokhobo, who waved goodbye to her “bubbly” daughter Bokamosa, trusting a scholar transport system that was supposed to be safer than public options. Hours later, that trust ended in a scene of “unimaginable carnage” on the R553.

The article highlights that, while the 22-year-old driver faces charges of murder and reckless driving, the rot goes deeper. It speaks of a “grey area” in the private sector, where regulations are ignored and enforcement is invisible. It is a system characterised by “unroadworthy vehicles, overloading and reckless driving”. As a result, the Daily Maverick notes that the daily commute for thousands of schoolchildren has become “a gamble with death”.

Warnings ignored

In her Step Ahead column in FOCUS this month (see page 22), Sharmini Naidoo addresses this issue. She poses the question that should haunt every policymaker: will authorities “really be able to bring about the change needed to provide safe transport to the 2.8 million scholars requiring transport?”

This is absolutely vital, as Nelly Mkhabela writes on page 8 of this issue: “The tragic Vanderbijlpark school bus crash on 19 January 2026, which claimed the lives of 14 pupils after a minibus collided with a lorry, serves as a stark reminder of the devastating consequences when safety fails.” She notes that road safety “transcends mere compliance”, stressing that it must be recognised as “a paramount strategic issue”.

The evidence of failure

Alas, that doesn’t seem to be happening right now – and the evidence of systemic failure is everywhere. As the Daily Maverick notes, the Vanderbijlpark tragedy was far from isolated. Earlier this year, the Cape Times reported yet another deadly crash in Isipingo, KwaZulu-Natal, involving an overloaded taxi and an unroadworthy truck. The details make my blood boil.

According to the Cape Times, the taxi driver’s permit had expired in 2023 – years before he got behind the wheel that day – and the vehicle was overloaded with up to 18 passengers. The truck involved had worn tyres, rendering it unroadworthy. The result? Eleven people dead, including a child.

This pattern – expired permits; overloaded and unroadworthy vehicles – is not rare. It is routine. Children are dying as a result. In July 2024, 11 learners died in Carletonville when a transport minibus caught fire. In 2022, a crash in Pongola killed 18 learners. Even as the country mourned Vanderbijlpark, nine learners were injured in Pinetown when a transport vehicle crashed into a tree. Routine negligence inevitably produces routine tragedy.

Widespread outrage

FOCUS readers are rightfully outraged at the situation. After the Vanderbijlpark tragedy, many reached out to express their fury and grief.

“The operator who owns this student transport business needs to explain why he employed a driver with known previous driving convictions to use for scholar transport!” noted one reader. Another expressed the visceral heartbreak of the incident: “I get emotional when I see the mothers and the pictures of the little ones. Imagine if it was one of your own. They all look so excited and thrilled about going to school and their uniforms – but their lives have been wiped out.”

There is a demand for harsh justice. “The taxi driver who survived is going to be charged with culpable homicide, on 14 counts. I hope he gets what he deserves,” wrote one reader, while another added: “That taxi driver deserves a life sentence. Selfish, stupid, foolhardy, aggressive, criminally negligent. I am rendered speechless.”

The hidden victim

However, amidst the anger directed at the taxi driver and the operator, there is another figure in this tragedy who is often overlooked: the truck driver.

One of our readers asked a poignant question: “Think for a moment about the truck driver. How is he feeling? What happens to him? Is he getting comforted and supported like all the grieving parents? By witness accounts, he did his best to try and prevent the accident.”

This reader is right. The truck driver, who was reportedly driving legally and did everything in his power to avoid the collision, is almost certainly experiencing a living hell.

This situation brings to mind one of Jim Ward’s most powerful There’s No Sport Like Transport columns from July 2024, titled “No Man is an Island”. It was about a driver involved in a fatal incident when a woman stepped in front of his truck.

Jim described a man who was unable to sleep. He “kept hearing the sound of the grille hitting her, right in front of him”. He was “plagued by feelings of responsibility for ending the life of this poor, confused woman and was suffering from recurring images of her twisted body lying broken in the rain”.

It affected his appetite, his rest and every waking thought; he simply could not concentrate on driving. Undoubtedly, he had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I am sure that the driver of the truck that collided with the minibus in Vanderbijlpark is experiencing exactly the same trauma. I can only hope that he is receiving the support he desperately needs…

The moral core of the industry

I also hope that other drivers don’t find themselves in the same sorry shoes. In order for this to happen, things need to change – drastically. But how? We cannot simply punish our way out of this carnage. While it is easy to target individual drivers, the deeper truth is that this crisis persists because we allow it. We have the regulations and the technology; what we lack is the collective spine to enforce them. As Sharmini Naidoo so rightly observes: “At its core, road safety is not about fines, policies or prosecutions. It is about people.”

We need the collective will to enforce the standards that already exist – every day, on every route, for every child. Every single stakeholder must declare that the killing ends here and now! Until that happens, the school run will remain a deadly lottery and parents will continue to wave goodbye each morning, haunted by the silent, agonising fear that their child may never return home.