Programme Director, Pastor Mlambo;
MECs present here today;
Bishops and other Members of the Clergy;
Acting CEO of the RTMC, Mr Collins Letsoalo;
Officials of Government;
Members of the media;
Distinguished guests;
Ladies and gentlemen.
It’s a great honour and pleasure for me to be part of this important occasion. This is, indeed, a divine appointment. Every day, I long to hear of new partnerships between government and civil society in the fight against road carnage. We need more of these partnerships, if we are to win the war against this challenge before us. We need more people joining hands, because each one of us must consider it our responsibility to put an end to the loss of lives we experience daily.
More sustainable partnerships on road safety will ensure that the fight against road carnage doesn’t become an event, but forms part of our Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Road crashes do not only happen during festive seasons or holiday breaks, but daily. This, then, says to us all that we should seek to spread the road safety gospel daily in our own unique ways, recruit a new road safety cadre daily, and get more people talking about the need to take personal responsibility.
Yesterday morning, Saturday, 17 March 2012 four people were killed, and six others injured, on the N2 near Prospecton in KwaZulu-Natal when the driver of a Toyota Condor lost control and the vehicle overturned. The driver had no valid driving licence and was under the influence of alcohol. This is murder.
Three days ago, last Thursday the driver of a mini-bus taxi collided with a cargo train in Johannesburg. We are further told that the driver behind the wheel of the mini-bus taxi has no valid driving licence. The driver, who was carrying 14 pupils aged between 12 and 16 at the time, reportedly disregarded a red light as well as officials who were cautioning motorists about the approaching goods train. The driver of the mini-bus taxi was impatient, and tried to slip through but was too slow.
The train smashed into the back of the taxi. Two school children were critically injured, they had spinal and head injuries, and four others were slightly injured. We are further told that the driver escaped without injuries, and was immediately arrested and charged. We are faced with a case of attempted murder here, and we call upon the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and other relevant authorities to act decisively in dealing with this matter. The Western Cape High Court recently sentenced mini-bus taxi driver Jacob Humphreys to an effective 20-year jail term for killing 10 children, as well as the attempted murder of four others.
No effort should be spared in dealing with these latest cases. Gone are those days when people used to escape the consequences of their irresponsible actions. There is a need for all of us to draw a clear, distinct line between culpable homicide and murder.
South African road users must be warned: If you are found to have been deliberately negligent and your actions lead to the loss of lives, the state shall pursue you legally and take you away from society because you pose a great danger.
In the case of learner drivers and drivers who have just acquired their driving licences, they must remain free of moving violations and at-fault accidents for a specified period of time. These drivers must have no alcohol or other drugs in their blood while they are driving, and should be restricted to certain maximum speeds.
Easter and the December holidays are critical periods for road traffic management authorities in the country. Easter covers a concentrated five-day high traffic volume period, with many motorists travelling the length and breadth of the country for religious and holiday purposes. During Easter and the December holidays each year, hundreds of people perish. Lives are cut short. The nation is robbed of immense talent.
Public transport and trucks dominate our roads during this period, resulting in a mass exodus of vehicles travelling along the major arterial and secondary routes.Public transport passenger vehicles such as long distance buses, mini-bus taxis, vans and trailers remain a huge challenge on our roads.
South Africa is a signatory to the United Nations (UN) Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020. As such, enforcement plays a critical role in ensuring that together with the other critical components, education, engineering and evaluation, the greatest impact must be made on offence rates and crash casualties.
As part of our contribution to this global initiative, we will focus our efforts on four key areas this year:
- fatigue or driver fitness;
- drinking and driving;
- the use of seat belts; and
- pedestrian safety.
A coherent and well-coordinated plan has been the cornerstone of the National Rolling Enforcement Plan (NREP), which includes provinces, municipal police and traffic authorities as well as the South African Police Services (SAPS), Cross Border Road Transport Agency (CBRTA) and Military Police.
The NREP seeks to co-ordinate and harmonize road traffic enforcement plans across the three tiers of government, in order to provide a seamless, month-by-month thematic focus for maximum impact and reach. The key focal areas for the three-month period from March to May 2012, which include the Easter period as well as school and other public holidays, are moving violations, vehicle and driver fitness and public transport and trucks.
Objectives of the Easter Road Safety Campaign having identified the Easter holiday as a peculiar challenge to road safety, our enforcement plans will take into consideration the following:
- to reduce critical offence rates that lead to crashes
- to reduce crashes, fatalities and serious injuries
- to inculcate safe road use behaviour and encourage voluntary compliance
- to create heightened awareness of road traffic safety issues
- to increase detection and prosecution of critical road traffic offences
- to harmonise and co-ordinate common operations at all three tiers of service delivery
- to maximise communications and publicity exposure on enforcement issues
- to improve the image of the enforcement fraternity.
Through the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC), we have analysed the persistent causes of road crashes. We will also pay specific attention to them during our law enforcement operations.
These include:
- excessive speeding;
- vehicle defects, especially tyres, brakesand steering mechanisms;
- moving violations, such as dangerousovertaking and red light infringements;
- abuse of alcohol by drivers and pedestrians;
- fatigue, for particularly long distanceoperators;
- lack of pedestrian compliance;
- overloading of goods and passengers; and
- the non-wearing of seatbelts play a majorrole in fatalities.
Special Easter Holiday enforcement interventions
This Easter period we have mapped the routes, sharpened our strategies and oiled our battle plan. Many national roads will be congested with traffic, causing delays and leading to impatience for many motorists. With Gauteng being home to 40% of South Africa’s vehicle population, we expect many motorists to leave the province to different destinations.
The N1 to Limpopo, especially the road to Moria City and Beit Bridge, will be heavily policed. The N3 to the coastal city of Durban and N1 to the Free State, Western and Eastern Cape will also get their fair share of our attention. On the N4 to Mpumalanga, Swaziland and Mozambique we expect heavy traffic, especially on stretches where there are road works towards the vicinity of border gates and around toll plazas.
We, therefore, count on the combined efforts of our traffic authorities, SAPS, South African National Defence Force (SANDF) and emergency services to ensure a smooth flow of traffic and the removal from the roads of un-roadworthy vehicles and traffic offenders. As a build up towards Easter, the Law Enforcement Technical Committee (LETCOM) has undertaken to conduct as many high visibility, high impact enforcement roadblocks with a view to cleanse our roads of bad elements before the critical Easter weekend.
This includes enforcement visits to taxi ranks, bus depots, weighbridges and truck stops. While enforcement officers will focus on vehicle and driver fitness, road safety officers will interact with and inform and educate road users.
Special, compulsory “rest stops” will be in place along major arterial routes, to ensure that drivers undertaking long distances are sufficiently rested. We also call on motorists to drive with their head-lamps on at all times to increase visibility.
Several innovative focus operations will also be conducted, including the following:
I have issued an instruction that a special country-wide alcohol blitz be conducted before the Easter weekend, where every driver stopped must be tested for alcohol.
LETCOM members will set up Information Centres, Help Centres and Rescue Camps along major arterial routes and hazardous locations. These will be overseen by volunteers from disaster management and community road safety councils.
Traffic officers will work together with Road Safety Education and Promotion personnel at various road safety activation points, workshops, radio broadcasts and community outreach programmes.
Traffic officers will also join hands with transport stakeholders, for joint projects in respect of driver and vehicle fitness issues. The Cross Border Road Traffic Agency (CBRTA) will also participate in joint operations, particularly those close to borders. Volunteers from the Red Cross will also be operating along key hazardous locations.
Progress in Rolling out the NREP
Our NREP strategy is working well, and we anticipate safer roads in the next few years, moving towards the UN goal of reducing fatalities by half by 2020. From October 2010 to October 2011, more than 15 million (15,051,565) vehicles and drivers were checked, more than six million (6,287,308) fines issued for various traffic offences.
More than 21 thousand (21,575) drunk drivers were arrested, and about 60 thousand (60,313) un-roadworthy vehicles removed from the roads. The majority of these un-roadworthy vehicles were buses and taxis.
Just last week popular radio and TV personality, Gareth Cliff, was sentenced to a fine of R10 000 or six months’ imprisonment by the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court for speeding. Cliff was arrested on 7 March for travelling at 182km/h in a 120km/h zone on the R21 near Pretoria.
Sentences imposed by the courts include hefty fines, imprisonment without the option of a fine as well as suspension/cancellation of driving licences. These motorists now also have criminal records.
These road safety interventions have resulted in a slight year-on-year reduction in road deaths, and a great deal of work still needs to be done in line with the Decade of Action for Road Safety. Road deaths dropped by 75% during the past (2011/12) December holidays on Africa’s busiest corridor, theN3 highway between Heidelberg in Gauteng and Cedara in KwaZulu-Natal.
The way forward
Going forward, we will soon officially launch a new road safety strategy: “Towards Safe Roads in South Africa - 2015.” We are currently implementing several measures to help us deal with the challenge of road carnage, including Road Safety Education at Schools, the establishment of more Community Road Safety Councils (CRSCs), Friends of the Decade forum, Zenani Mandela Road Safety Scholarship and Voluntary Traffic Observers.
Road safety will now form part of the life skills curriculum at schools. We are going back to the basics where at primary school, learners will be taught about basic rules of the road. The focus is also to empower Grade 11 and 12 learners as well as tertiary students with learners’ and drivers’ licences to curb the rush of obtaining licences at the age of 18.
At their leisure, under no pressure whatsoever, learners will be taught rules of the road and trained to drive and be road-wise. The project has already kicked off in four provinces, and will be rolled-out to the rest of the country from next month. In order to ensure that this programme is a success, we are calling upon retired officials such as traffic officers, police officers, nurses, emergency services personnel, as well as other volunteers, to enlist as Reservist Traffic Officers and assist us in ensuring safer roads across our country.
Furthermore, we are equipping taxi drivers with an enriched road safety culture and driving skills through the Taxi Driver of the Year campaign in partnership with BrandHouse. One of the major ground-breaking initiatives in the public transport road safety space will be the training of taxi drivers in first aid application.
Drivers sometimes survive road crashes, and are often in a position to assist injured passengers. We, therefore, want to ensure that every mini-bus taxi is fitted with a First Aid kit, and every driver is trained for this crucial life-saving exercise.
Another focus area is pedestrians, who account for the majority of road deaths. We will be implementing a Pedestrian Campaign, shortly after Easter, called "Walkers for Drivers".
Over the past year, the Ministerial Task Team, appointed to investigate fraudulent cross-border roadworthy certificates in conjunction with law enforcement agencies including the Hawks, has been engaged in gathering evidence to verify the number of vehicles issued with roadworthy certificates in the various provinces as well as those vehicles that failed roadworthy tests, but were subsequently roadworthied at testing stations in other provinces.
All roadworthy certificates issued by a testing station in a certain province but being licensed in another province are being flagged, to the effect that we are investigating the entire issue of cross-border roadworthy certificates. Legislative amendments are also being considered in order to deal effectively with the issue of fraudulent roadworthy certificates, including amending the provisions whereby vehicles licensed in certain provinces are being roadworthied in other provinces.
The Department of Transport, through the RTMC, is now represented on the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security cluster (JCPS). This will allow the RTMC more leverage in dealing with road safety challenges in a comprehensive manner with various relevant departments, including the Department of Justice, the National Prosecuting Authority, the SAPS and Department of Health, amongst others. This joint approach will ensure that all role-players deal decisively, firmly and consistently with issues of road offences that lead to the unnecessary loss of lives.
On behalf of the transport family, I wish to extend our sincere gratitude and appreciation to AVIS car rental for making available twenty vehicles for visible patrols during the month of April. Our thanks also goes out to the various other partners, stakeholders and Friends of the Decade of Action, including the media, who have partnered with government to ensure safer roads in South Africa.
As I conclude, I wish to share with you a heartening story of an old lady from Cape Town. In partnership with LEAD SA, this past week we honoured 80-year-old Ms Hazel Souma who has never received a single traffic fine during her entire 62 years driving history. Ms Souma’s unblemished driving record and sterling example is proof that a sizeable majority of motorists do obey the rules of the road.
Since the story of Ms Souma became public, we have had many people calling radio stations to share their unblemished driving records as well. This is encouraging as we seek to cleanse our roads of bad elements. Let us all emulate Ms Souma’s example.
Road Safety is Everyone’s Responsibility.
Claim back the roads, report traffic offences to 0861400 800.
I thank you for your attention.
