Editor
The tragic death of Public Service and Administration national minister Collins Chabane and his two members of the Police VIP Protection Unit – Lesiba Sekele and Lawrence Lentsoane on March 15 tells the calamitous story of the poor state of our traffic law enforcement and appalling attitude of drivers.

This horrific incident really forces us to confront these realities head-on. It’s even harder to accept this accident, especially as we are told that the truck driver is responsible for this accident that claimed the lives of Mr Chabane and his bodyguards was making a U-turn when the collision took place.

Furthermore, we are told that the tests by police show that the driver was drunk and that the truck itself was not roadworthy. Pictures of the wreckage show that Minister Chabane and his minders stood no chance of surviving. Their car was in fact reduced to a mangled pile of metal, with only the wheels intact.

This tells us about the bad attitude of our drivers and I think a radical new policy is needed if we are to stop the carnage on our roads. What I have noticed in this country is that it is very easy to drive an unroadworthy vehicle. I don’t even want to mention drunk driving and driving without a licence because it has become a common practice.

The light punishment given to traffic offenders is of grave concern, especially in cases in which there is evidence of drunken driving.
Harsh punishment or sentences should be imposed, particularly when it can be established that the driver knew the vehicle was unroadworthy.

Statistics show that in countries in which road fatalities are low, law enforcement is never compromised. Hence, we call upon the Transport Minister Dipuo Peters to lead in driving the formulation of radical policies that will remove from our roads all drivers who just as they please.

It is even harder if I think that only hours before Minister Chabane was killed, he had been addressing mourners at the funeral of a local leader Samuel Nxumalo in Magona, Limpopo. There he implored with colleagues to refrain from travelling long distances, warning that fatigue would set in. As we remember ‘Inyamazane’ as Minister Chabane was known within the ANC ranks, we should also think about the hundreds of others who daily die unnecessarily on our roads.

Philani Hadebe
Draycott