Family and friends at the memorial service for 11 learners who lost their lives in the devastating Merafong car crash at Grace Bible Church on July 16, 2024 in Carletonville. South Africa. It is alleged that the scholar transport minibus was hit from behind by a bakkie, causing it to overturn and subsequently catch fire. (File photo by Sharon Seretlo/Gallo Images via Getty Images)
Road accident figures and December death tolls began to trickle in this week.
The numbers are disturbing.
Several provinces saw a year-on-year increase, including Gauteng and the Eastern Cape, where deaths doubled. We are still waiting on the final national figure, but the count stood at more than 500 on 19 December. This meaningless loss of life is unconscionable.
These are numbers that need no punctuation point but one arrived all the same on Monday when a minibus collided with a truck on Van Reenen’s Pass, killing 17 people. And yet even that crescendo barely registers to most of us beyond a few surface headlines.
We are a society that is numb to carnage.
We must change that attitude in 2025.
This publication has spent its existence holding the powerful to account. But in the sands of the political soap opera we too often lose sight of — or ignore — our own responsibilities.
“We remain concerned about the high number of people who continue to drive under the influence of alcohol and pedestrians who use roads recklessly,” Transport Minister Barbara Creecy said midway through the festive period, when it was already clear that deaths and arrests were getting out of hand.
Many of the fatal accidents occurred on good roads, in good conditions. Their cause was human fallibility, fuelled by holiday revelry.
The undeniable role of alcohol in gender-based violence, another one of South Africa’s scourges, is another story altogether.
We are a country that has a long, complicated relationship with alcohol. Taverns, for instance, played a key role during apartheid prohibition, providing a roof for murmurs of freedom to percolate.
That history was borne out after Covid restrictions were lifted and struggle songs were sung from the long lines outside bottle stores.
We will never become a nation of teetotallers.
What we need is to fix our inability to change societal behaviour. It can no longer be socially acceptable to revel in unrestrained hedonism if it endangers somebody else, whether on the road or in our homes.
No one needs a law or Heineken commercial to understand that reality.
If anything, global experience teaches us that paternalistic restrictions are ineffectual at best. This change must come from us; no politician is going to save us from road carnage and gender-based violence.
Until then, the facts and figures will read as little more than drab accounting.
