


A Safe Driving Culture is Possible in SA
Published in the Natal Mercury, 30/7/2002
According to the World Bank, the developing world has only
32% of the total motor vehicle fleet but contributes to 75% of the total global
road accident deaths.
Road accidents in Africa cost the continent more in economic
terms than the foreign aid received by the continent. The World Bank refuses to
give aid to any country that does not maintain its roads infrastructure.
In 1994 we emerged from our unequal and fragmented past.
Apartheid South Africa provides the most powerful argument against the theory of
separate but equal.
In the rest of the world, when you say someone has a
matriculation certificate, it is reasonable to assume they can read, write,
spell and count – not so in South Africa.
The highest investment a country can make is on its human
resource development. The cost of uneducated matriculants and graduates is
already taking a heavy toll on the development of our country. But this is not
as fatal and irreversible as people who hold driving licenses but cannot drive.
Since 1995, KwaZulu-Natal has pioneered a new approach to
road safety based on best world practice.
As a province we have done everything within our provincial
competence. But we also needed national co0-ordination. This included, inter
alia, legislation on overloading control. Since 1998, between 84% - 86% of
prosecutions for overloading in South Africa were done in KZN, with the other
provinces doing 14% - 16%.
You don’t have to be an engineer to know how that
non-enforcement elsewhere destroys one of the biggest investments a country can
make.
We have had protests and resistance from the freight industry
but what comes first is the interest of the country.
Are we wrong to enforce the National Road Traffic Act?
As a direct sequel to the KZN/State of Victoria Road Safety
Project, the identification of the driver at the roadside was seen as a key
feature to even begin a serious campaign to reduce road carnage.
This initiative, together with a new national awareness of
road safety led to the amendment of the National Road Traffic Act in 1998.
Apartheid fragmentation created numerous authorities that
could issue valid driving licences. Thousands of these licences had absolutely
no relation to the holders’ ability to drive. They were obtained fraudulently
but considered valid as they carried the stamp of a registering authority.
Valid licences did not indicate that the drivers had
undergone the same standard of examination. Drivers who had no eye defects when
they obtained licences continued to have valid licences even when their sight
had deteriorated.
The National Road Traffic Act provides for the substitution
of all existing driving licences with the Credit Card Format. This provides:
- By 1996, it had already
become compulsory for every driver to carry their driving licence at all times
when driving.
The public also complained that the ID book was too bulky and
contained other information like firearm licences, which they did not wish to
show to traffic officers on the road. The credit card type licence is the answer
to those complaints.
- The new licence is
machine-readable at the roadside and all previous violations recorded against a
driver can be accessed immediately.
- Previous fraudulently
obtained licences are automatically rejected.
- Advocate TJ Botha of the CSIR in 1990 had estimated that
there were nearly a million fraudulent driver licences in circulation. Is anyone
surprised at so many deaths on the road?
- The credit card type
licence contains security features that cannot be reproduced.
Time Frames
- South Africans have been
given from March 1998 to August 31, 2002 – that is more than five years – to
convert their licences to the new type licence.
- It takes six weeks to
count 40 million South Africans.
- It takes 24 hours for 25
million voters to cast their votes.
- A government has five
years to carry out changes even if it is reversing policies, which have been in
place for centuries.
KZN has 928 018 licence holders. In order not to make extra
infrastructure necessary and to manage delays to avoid queues we structured the
conversion process around the birth dates of licence holders in each birth
month.
People were given a period of three to five months in which
time to convert their licences.
Persons were identified by means of their identity numbers
from the Department of Home Affairs database and were sent two postal reminders
– one prior to the conversion period and one during the conversion period.
They were also prompted by means of national media campaigns
and the insertion of print adverts in a number of publications circulating in
KZN – to the tune of R600 000.
Additionally, motor vehicle licence renewals were endorsed
with a reminder message.
The Department of Transport throughout the conversion period
also did a number of electronic media interviews.
How then can we be accused of not having mounted a publicity
campaign?
It is blatantly incorrect to single out KZN as the most
expensive province.
The cost in KZN is R105 while in Limpopo Province it is R168,
R127 in Mpumalanga and R122 in Gauteng.
All other provinces impose an administrative penalty for late
transactions over and above their already high transaction fees for conversions.
Saving lives on the roads is most urgent and the credit card
type licence type driving licence is the key to restoring the integrity of the
driving licence. We are being asked to give people more time. How much is more
time?
Having fraudulent licences is just like having illegal
firearms. It is just more deadly.
We have reduced the number of deaths on the road from 20 000
to 14 000 in this province.
We are also steadily eliminating fraudulent licences. We have
opened a window for fraudulent licence holders to voluntarily come forward and
tell us how they obtained them in exchange for amnesty from prosecution.
We are achieving success. We have been opening on Saturdays
and paying overtime to staff, making the conversion convenient.
Unfortunately, in most instances sometimes it would be less
than 80 people coming to take advantage of the opportunity in spite of huge
advertisements placed in the local media across the province.
But since this debate that was raised by your paper, this
weekend alone, our stations have reported over 600 people who have availed
themselves of the opportunity.
The credit card type licence will be the only driving licence
acceptable in South Africa and the Southern Africa Development Community by
March 2003. After that anyone without it will be regarded as an unlicensed
driver.
If we are to have a country of Law and Order, let us not have
laws that are optional. In KZN we are not going to be deterred from making our
roads safe. Five years has been enough for anyone wanting to abide by the law.
S’bu Ndebele is
KwaZulu-Natal’s Minister of Transport
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