Every school morning begins the same way for thousands of parents across South Africa.
A child is dressed. A lunchbox is packed. A kiss is placed on a forehead. And then comes the hardest part: handing your child over to someone else and trusting that they will return them home safely.
For many families, scholar transport is not a luxury. It is a necessity. Parents leave for work before sunrise, juggle multiple jobs, or live far from schools that offer better opportunities. Scholar transport becomes the bridge between hope and education. But increasingly that bridge feels fragile.
Recent tragedies involving the deaths of children during scholar transport have ripped open a quiet fear many parents carry daily: what if today is the day something goes wrong?
This is not a fear born of paranoia, it is rooted in reality.
Parents are often forced to make impossible choices. The safest transport option is frequently the most expensive. The most affordable option comes with unanswered questions. Is the vehicle roadworthy? Is the driver licensed? Are seatbelts working? Or are we trusting appearances, recommendations and prayer? What makes this burden heavier is that the responsibility does not rest equally.
Parents trust because they must. They trust drivers they barely know, vehicles they do not inspect and systems they assume are regulated. That trust is not careless, it is compelled by circumstance.
When a child does not return home, the heartbreak is indescribable. But it is compounded by guilt the cruel, unnecessary question parents ask themselves: “Did I choose wrong?” No parent should carry that weight. Choosing scholar transport should never feel like gambling with a child’s life.
Yet, enforcement often comes too late. Vehicles are impounded after lives are lost. Warnings are issued after funerals. For parents, this feels like a betrayal by systems meant to protect the most vulnerable. This is why the conversation must shift.
Scholar transport safety cannot be seasonal. It cannot depend on tragedies to trigger action.
It must be consistent, visible and uncompromising. Parents need transparent systems, verified operators and schools that take an active role in monitoring who transports their pupils. Communities, too, must play their part. Turning a blind eye to an overloaded vehicle or an unroadworthy taxi because “it’s not my child” only delays the inevitable. Today it is another family’s loss. Tomorrow it could be ours.
At the heart of this issue is a simple truth: parents are not asking for perfection, they are asking for protection.
Every child deserves to arrive at school alive. Every parent deserves to go to work without the quiet dread that accompanies a phone call in the middle of the day. And every morning goodbye should come with the certainty that it is not the last.
Until that certainty exists, the plight of parents relying on scholar transport will remain one of the most painful, unspoken struggles in our society, one that demands more than sympathy.
It demands accountability, action and change. DM