Tonight, many parents will lie awake thinking about tomorrow morning – about uniforms laid out, bags by the door, and the moment their child disappears down the road in someone else’s vehicle. After the crash that took place recently, that moment carries a weight it should never have had.
At a time of such devastating loss, language can feel thin. Safeguarding asks us to look forward – to think about what must exist before harm happens, not only how we respond after it does.
The recent school transport crash in the Vaal, which killed at least 13 learners, is devastating, and it is not an isolated incident. National reporting has shown that between 2018 and 2022, more than 800 school children died in school-transport-related accidents across SA, according to media analysis drawing on national data.
Children under 14 make up more than 10% of all road fatalities, based on national road safety figures. These are not rare tragedies. They expose how routine journeys to school have been made unsafe by design, not by chance.
Most parents do not choose unsafe transport. They choose from what exists. They choose under pressure – of work that cannot wait, of distances that cannot be walked, of a country where school transport exists, but remains fragmented and inaccessible for many families. Safety has become something you buy if you can, and gamble on if you cannot. This reflects inequality, not parental neglect or a lack of care.
Safeguarding
Safeguarding is about care – and it is about justice.
If safety is treated as a right, it cannot depend on income or luck. When families are left to manage risks created by weak systems, those risks land most heavily on those with the least room to absorb them. Care is present – yet it is being asked to carry what systems should be holding.
Some parents can speak up safely. Others cannot. For many – especially those who are poor, migrant, undocumented or marginalised – asking questions can cost them the only transport their child has. Silence, in these contexts, is survival.
That is why safeguarding cannot depend on individual courage alone. Responsibility must grow with power. Those with more safety, status, institutional backing or voice have a greater duty to act – not because others lack care or capacity, but because many are already carrying responsibility under conditions that crush their ability to act safely.
Safeguarding is not mysterious. It has a shape. It means a vehicle that is roadworthy and not overloaded. It means a driver who is licensed, trained, vetted and sober – a safe person, capable and intentional about acting in a child’s best interests while that child is in their care. It means seatbelts that work, doors that close, and children who are not stacked on top of one another. It means a name, a number and a route that someone is responsible for.
Road accident figures tell only part of the story. They do not account for the risks children face when they travel with adults who have not been properly vetted, trained or monitored. There are no reliable national statistics tracking abuse specifically in school transport – not because it does not happen, but because it is rarely recorded as a transport issue.
When children travel without safeguards, the risks they face are not only from vehicles, but from people.
Regulation is one of the ways a society turns care into obligation, not goodwill. It shows up in vehicles being inspected, drivers and operators being known and vetted, complaints being answered and dangerous practices being stopped – starting where risk is highest and expanding until this is not a privilege for some, but a right for every child.
Risks not fully addressed
While SA has a learner transport policy designed to reduce risk on the journey to school, it has focused largely on road safety and access, without fully addressing safeguarding risks such as vetting, training and accountability – even as more than 2.8million children travel daily in private or informal transport arrangements outside government programmes.
Even within the subsidised programme, safeguarding gaps remain. While the policy prioritises the safety of the girl child and learners with disabilities, it does not yet require basic child-protection measures such as vetting. In practice, this means a person can be legally transporting vulnerable children without ever having been checked for risk.
Governance is fragmented, and when responsibility is blurred, accountability weakens. SA needs one clear national standard for any vehicle that carries children – whether it belongs to the state, a school, a business or a community.
Carrying children should come with the same expectations we place on anyone who works with them: that they are safe, trained, checked, and accountable. That means proper vetting, basic safeguarding training, clear monitoring, and simple ways to raise concerns. This must be held jointly by the departments of basic education and transport, with no confusion about who sets the rules, who checks them, and who acts when children are put at risk.
Schools are not neutral in this. When a school hands a child to a transporter at the end of the day, it is extending its duty of care beyond the gate and into that journey. Knowing who is collecting children, noticing when something looks unsafe, and refusing to treat danger as “not our problem” are not extras. They are part of care.
Responsibility
Drivers who transport children are entrusted with something precious. With that trust comes the right to dignity and support – and the responsibility to act in a child’s best interests. Transporting children is not simply a job. It is a guardianship.
The state carries the highest responsibility. When children die on their way to school, this is not only a transport issue – it is a child-protection failure. Regulation, inspection and response are not acts of goodwill. They are duties.
Tomorrow morning, children will still climb into vehicles. That cannot stop. What can change is how held they are by all of us – across wealth and poverty, across suburbs and townships, across power and vulnerability.
Safeguarding is not a favour we do for children. It is a debt we owe them. Justice means paying it – with responsibility that follows power, with systems that carry what love should not have to carry alone, and with the courage to protect every child. DM
Erin Faure has a social work background in child protection and safeguarding across South Africa and the UK. She has worked with schools, NGOs, public services and organisations.