Fix the bribery and fraud, Mr Fix

Yet again, we have witnessed another beginning-of-the-year Pointless Ritual… that of the lamentation by our transport minister over the number of people who died on our roads over the festive season.

Fikile Mbalula announced on Tuesday that 1 685 fatalities were recorded during the 2021 festive period, which is a 14% increase, compared to the previous year. While that might seem to be yet another indictment of our appallingly bad road safety systems, to be fair to the minister, the traffic at the end of 2020 had been significantly reduced because of Covid restrictions.

In other words, 2021 was just reverting to another “slaughter as normal” year. And, unsurprisingly, none of the billions of rands spent on awareness campaigns, the innumerable roadblocks nor, indeed, the valuable photo opportunities graced by the presence of the minister, made the slightest bit of difference.

Mbaks, though, went further to announce that the government is to appeal the High Court in Pretoria’s ruling that declared the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (Aarto) Acts unconstitutional and invalid. With a straight face, he said: “The importance of Aarto in driving behaviour change of motorists and providing disincentives for unbecoming conduct cannot be overemphasised.”

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No, minister, Aarto as you and your comrades enacted it was nothing more than a cynical revenue-raising device for provinces and municipalities.

A proper points demerit system will definitely be a powerful tool in changing behaviour… but the lawless and ignorant way people drive in this country is related directly to the fact that so many licences are obtained through bribery and fraud.

That means many people behind the wheels of vehicles are not competent in driving them and have little clue about the rules of the road. On top of that, most traffic law enforcement is a mere bribe collection system.

Those are the problems which need fixing, Mr Fix.