Beyond the recklessness of scholar transport drivers, the unregulated nature of the booming scholar transport industry, and the general road safety challenges in South Africa, the deaths of schoolchildren in the Vaal are a bigger local government issue, a spatial injustice. The real problems are not surfacing for decisive policy action or intervention.
At best, there will be a race of funeral
undertakers volunteering to make the send-off for victims of spatial injustice
look grandiose to levels of death admiration, without addressing the many who
might be waiting in the queue for the same fate. As part of the ritual, politicians will be in front
row seats as national chief mourners, arguably representing ‘we the people’ who
voted them in.
Spatial justice is about
ensuring the fair and equitable distribution of resources, opportunities, and
quality of life across geographical spaces; the opposite is spatial injustice.
The trickiest outcome of urbanisation is access to agglomerated services by
those entering the urban spaces. How human settlements facilitate a better
life for all is the foundation of social justice, human dignity, and the
well-being of society, including the prevention of avoidable accidents and
calamities.
In South Africa, the
template of access to the nodes of agglomeration is a source of some of the
injustices of the past, recognised by the 1996 RSA Constitution. It remains an
injustice that children travel long distances to access a fundamental human
right, such as education. The proximity and mobility of basic social services
to human settlement nodes are a template for social and economic justice that
requires out-of-the-box thinking from the local government system. Anything
less is an injustice.
The apartheid design of
human settlements was to create labour reserves out of which the urban centres
would be serviced. People were settled where they could be fetched in the
morning and taken out in the evening after they had completed their chores.
This template has unfortunately settled with access to perceived quality
education. Amenities as basic as access to quality education were planned
within a racial caste system that excluded the majority. Those at the periphery
of opportunity affluence, gerrymandered by apartheid spatial planning, still
reflect historical segregation.
The triumph of
non-racialism through the 1996 Constitution meant legal access to opportunities
for those who were excluded based on race. However, this did not address the
inherent spatial realities that shaped access beyond what the statutes say. As
public policy, a tool of access to facilities that are physically out of reach
for the previously excluded, imposes itself on secluded spaces of privilege in
suburbia, its consequences are proximity and distance.
The movement of scholars
to and from spaces with educational facilities as part of the concentrated
opportunities developed into an unplanned political economy and thus remained unsupported
by a matching regulatory framework. Packaged as commodities for processing
at learning centres 20-40 kilometres away from where they reside, learners are
subjected to 'human mobility' carrier systems that haul them outside the
normative demands of a decent public transportation system.
The Vaal tragedy
highlights the urgent need for targeted policy reforms, such as integrated
public transport planning and equitable resource allocation, to address spatial
injustice and improve safety for all learners and commuters.
Beyond election
rhetoric, South Africa needs urgent policy action to address spatial injustice,
which costs the economy and citizens alike, inspiring a call to collective
responsibility among informed citizens and advocates.
Achieving spatial
justice requires overcoming planning system limitations and political will,
ensuring that resource distribution aligns with the constitutional promise of
social equity and reduces road safety hazards for learners and workers alike.
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