On August 25 2011, Jacob Humphreys ignored signals at a level crossing in Blackheath in Cape Town and found himself on the tracks of an oncoming train. Ten children were ushered into eternity on their way to Good Hope Primary, an Adventist Christian school. The driver survived the crash. He would admit previously slipping through the booms and having had two accidents with children in the taxi.
On January 19 2026, Ayanda Dludla overtook several cars on a narrow Vanderbijlpark road and sped headlong into an oncoming truck. Fourteen children would touch the face of God that week, several of them attending El-Shaddai Christian School. The driver survived the crash. The government spin doctors responded quickly: his professional driving permit had expired, the problem was private transport etc.
Between 2018-2022, about 800 precious souls died in scholar transport-related incidents, reported one newspaper. Three questions might help us make sense of these tragedies.
Why has nothing been done to end these mass killings of children?
One reason is that South Africans have become versed in reactive politics. Something tragic happens, politicians rush to the scene of the crime to express concern. At the Vaal tragedy, the president makes a sad announcement saying, “we are pained” and remarks appreciatively that the minister visited the devastated families.
“We inherited a system,” he continues (don’t roll your eyes), that we must work together to solve this problem, “and look at how we can save the lives of our children.” We react and then we do nothing for as sure as the sun comes up tomorrow, there will be more children dying in or flung out of taxis.
It is not as if there is no policy, for we have the National Learner Transport Policy (2015) and regulations such as 247 and 250 of the National Road Traffic Act. But policy is not practice and that is why the mayhem will continue.
Merely listing the problems make things worse since we have heard them after every tragedy: reckless driving, unroadworthy taxis, overcrowded minibuses, competition among taxi owners, corruption within the industry, weak regulation, little oversight, driver competence, poorly maintained vehicles and on and on.
Why does this problem persist?
Quite simply because it is mainly the children of the working classes and the poor. They are fodder to the elites, black and white, who drop their children in luxury 4x4s close to their homes. Trust me, if it was a plane load of middle class and wealthy people going down on a regular basis, you would have seen widespread panic and an urgency of response.
How can this problem be addressed?
It is quite simple, actually: change human behaviour through relentless enforcement of the regulations that already exist. That however will require two things — significant, sustained funding and uncompromising political will. Both are in short supply in South Africa since scholar transport for the poor is simply not a priority for this government; it is as simple as that.
What is the fundamental difficulty behind enforcing compliance? To take the compliance fight to the taxi industry is to provoke a highly organised industry whose gargantuan economic success (an estimated R100bn in annual revenue) depends on a semi-broken system.
— Jonathan Jansen
After the Vaal tragedy, the Gauteng MEC for transport was suddenly out and about doing roadside inspections and the Gauteng department of roads and transport announced that 94% of scholar transport vehicles were non-compliant. It is amazing what a tragedy can unleash in short term reaction, but these are not serious people.
What is the fundamental difficulty behind enforcing compliance? To take the compliance fight to the taxi industry is to provoke a highly organised industry whose gargantuan economic success (an estimated R100bn in annual revenue) depends on a semi-broken system. Try to ensure every vehicle is roadworthy, every driver licensed, every speeding fine paid. As they say on the Cape Flats, “Jy sal jou gat sien.”
And so our government has made a Faustian bargain with the taxi industry. You transport masses of children of the poor and working classes to school given a failed public transport system, and we will look away while your drivers violate every traffic rule in the book.
Yes, of course, we will have the occasional stops and write tickets and reprimand wrongdoers. But most of the 250,000 taxis will continue to operate with impunity.
And when children continue to die, we will rush to the scene, visit the parents, declare our sadness and the very next day return to abnormal. After all, our children are safe in padded luxury cars.
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