By Peggie Mars, Founder of Wheel Well
South Africans are right to demand safer scholar transport. Too many headlines have told stories of overloaded vehicles, unroadworthy minibuses and preventable tragedies. Parents should not have to wonder whether the vehicle collecting their child will return them home safely.
The Gauteng Department of Roads and Transport’s recent compliance crackdown signals that government has heard our frustrations and cries. The department has introduced a set of stringent compliance requirements aimed at professionalising the scholar transport sector. These include mandatory business registration documents, up-to-date financial statements, tax clearance certificates and private indemnity insurance in addition to Road Accident Fund cover.
Vehicles must meet stricter safety standards. Drivers must have valid professional permits. The message is uncompromising: unsafe operators will be removed. Few would argue with that principle.
But good policy is not judged only by its intent. It is judged by its consequences especially for working-class and rural families who have the fewest alternatives.
According to the General Household Survey 2024, more than 61% of South African learners walk to school. Research by Child Gauge had previously estimated that figure even higher, at 68%. In many communities, scholar transport is the only viable alternative to long, hazardous walks along busy roads without pavements or safe crossings.
Where scholar transport operates, it is often run by small, local operators. They may lack sophisticated accounting systems but they know the routes, the families and the risks. When compliance requirements escalate without structured support, these operators do not simply “upgrade”. Many exit the market.
The result? Fewer vehicles, longer walks, greater exposure to traffic accidents, crime and harsh weather.
On paper, the system may look cleaner. However, on the ground, daily risk may increase.
The insurance debate captures this tension. Private indemnity insurance is rational from a governance perspective. It allows faster claims, clearer liability and better risk management than the already strained Road Accident Fund. But for a single-vehicle operator, layered compliance cost insurance premiums, audits, administrative filings can quickly exceed sustainable income.
At that point, regulation stops being a safety tool and becomes a market barrier.
This is the uncomfortable question policymakers must confront: does removing a non-compliant vehicle automatically make a child safer? Or does it sometimes push that child into a more dangerous alternative?
Safety reform must account for displacement. Risk does not disappear; it moves.
There is a middle path. Mechanical and roadworthiness standards brakes, tyres, seatbelts, driver permits should be enforced strictly and immediately. No compromise. But complex administrative compliance could be phased in with structured support. Cooperative models could allow small operators to pool insurance and accounting services. Compliance support centres could help regularise businesses rather than close them.
The private sector also has skin in the game. Insurers and service providers can develop scaled products designed for micro-operators, instead of pricing them out of the formal system.
South Africa does not face a choice between safety and access. It faces a governance design challenge. Reform must be firm but it must also be realistic. If regulation succeeds only on paper while children walk further along dangerous roads, we have solved the wrong problem.
Every learner deserves safe passage to school, achieving that requires requires implementation that understands the lived realities of South African families. If we get the balance right, we can professionalise scholar transport without shrinking it. If we get it wrong, the cost will not be measured in compliance reports it will be measured on our roads.