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A Safe Driving Culture is Possible in SAPublished 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:
Time Frames
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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