 
SPEECH BY THE KWAZULU-NATAL HEAD OF TRANSPORT, DR KWAZI MBANJWA DURING THE 2003 EASTER HOLIDAY ROAD SAFETY PRESENTATION15 April 2003
His Worship, Mayor of Durban Unicity Good Morning, Ladies and Gentlemen and thank you for coming to the launch. Today I want to explain some of our efforts aimed at saving lives and how we have planned for these Easter Holidays. As early as 2001 the National Department of Transport released figures indicating that during the five days over the Easter weekend in 1999, 35 people in KwaZulu-Natal lost their lives. During the same period in year 2000 this figure was reduced to 28, a saving of seven lives over a short period. That constituted a 20% reduction and even super ceded our overall reduction of 16% in fatal crashes between 1998 and 1999. This was more than our target of 14 % per annum reduction in fatalities over a five-year period and indicates that we are still on track towards achieving the saving of 3 500 lives and R4.1 billion by the end of this year in our road safety programme. Close to 4 million vehicles travelled along the N3 and N2 between 1 December 2002 and 6 January 2003 according to traffic counters placed at strategic points. This count does not include vehicles that travelled within the urban, rural and far rural areas of the Province. 145 Collisions occurred in the urban areas whilst 89 were in rural areas. 60% of fatalities, which occur in KwaZulu-Natal, occur within the Durban Metro area. The most dangerous sites are:
The Minister and the CEO of the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Transport are committed to reduce the statistics for this Easter period and every effort ie. Education, Enforcement and Engineering aspects have been fully integrated to ensure that the people of the Province as well as our visitors are safe. The concept of self-policing is going to be used where road users take the responsibility of safer roads. The Easter period will cover 17 April and 4 May 2003. Programmes taking place during Easter are:- DRIVER AWARENESS FOR LONG DISTANCE TAXI ASSOCIATIONS AND TOUR BUS OPERATORS This programme will be done with all the long distance taxi associations and tour bus operators, where aspects of vehicle fitness – pre-trip inspection is done before embarking on a journey. The importance of tyres and overloading are also covered, as these are the two factors that contribute largely to the collisions. The KZN Taxi council, the eThekwini Minibus Taxi Forum and the PTEU are also actively involved. In conjunction with this, taxi rank awareness campaigns are carried out by the community road safety councils. Their message from the communities’ side to the public transport sector is to bring our families safely during this festive period. ALCOHOL AWARENESS The Sober is Safe campaign and the Omela Ngasekhaya programmes will cover the reasons that drinking and driving/walking is a crime. The Sober is Safe campaign ill target the Beach Front hotels and pubs whilst the Omela Ngasekhaya program will take place at taverns. Omela Ngasekhaya takes place at: Phoenix, Chatsworth, Wentworth, Cato Manor, Sydenham, Vulindlela. ALCO ROADBLOCKS Durban Metro will conduct alco roadblocks on a daily basis in and around the city. Educational material on alcohol will be distributed at these roadblocks. REST STOPS
ROAD SIDE COURTS Still awaiting confirmation. AWARENESS CAMPAIGNS / PUBLIC PARTICIPATION DURBAN METRO: INNER WEST Marianhill Toll Plaza – Education to support enforcement DURBAN METRO: NORTH Kwa Mashu taxi rank DURBAN METRO: SOUTH Static display at Dakota Beach Education link up with Enforcement at roadblocks
Ultra City – educational material on display METRO CENTRAL Taxi rank awareness CHURCH PROGRAM On the 18 April 2003, all churches meet at the Umlazi Stadium. There
would be a static road safety display. Messages on pedestrians will be
broadcasted during this period. KZN DISABILITY FORUM – FEDERAL COUNCIL Accident victims on wheelchairs will speak to the travelling public relating their trauma, sending out strong road safety messages. The carnage experienced on South African roads is not a new phenomenon. What is new is Government’s resolve to get on top of the problem. What is new is Government’s realisation that this is not a problem that can be solved by Government alone. As I indicated before, our campaign will continue to put more emphasis on pedestrian safety because research indicates that pedestrians have became the most vulnerable of all road users. The official death toll for KwaZulu-Natal during the 2002/2003 Summer Holidays commencing on 1 December 2002 to 12 January 2003 was 293. The breakdown of these fatalities is as follows:
From these figures, you can see for yourself that there is a shift in terms of road deaths with more pedestrians dying on our roads than other road users. Nationally, the official death toll for the same period was 1467 and the breakdown of fatalities was as follows:
Again more pedestrians died on our roads than either drivers or passengers. We have thus embarked upon a holistic approach in which we intensify law enforcement to correct pedestrian behaviour, be it jay-walking, drunken walking or any other form of irresponsible behaviour in the same way as we do to drivers. In the final analysis, I want to re-emphasize the following: It is a crime to jaywalk.
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