National Traffic Police Inspectors removes school children from an overloaded scholar transport in Lenasia, South of Johannesburg, 21 January 2026. Handwritten notices were issued to operators whose vehicles were not roadworthy, with fines. Picture: Nigel Sibanda/ The Citizen
Scholar transport operators stopped operations on Monday, leaving parents to find alternative transport for their children.
This comes after a minibus crash last week Monday that left 14 children dead.
The driver of the bus has since been arrested and charged with 14 counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder, after dashcam footage showed that he tried to overtake multiple vehicles before colliding with a truck.
Since then, the department of transport has conducted multiple roadblocks targeting scholar transport operators, which has left scholar transport associations fuming.
Unfair treatment
Ebeny de Klerk, who has been transporting children for 20 years, says that his Toyota Hiace is roadworthy and that he has his driving permit, but traffic police still want to impound his vehicle.
De Klerk said: “Traffic police took my license disc, claiming that I don’t have the necessary transport permit, they must tell me which permit they are referring to.”
He also said that during Covid, they were made to register with the department of transport, but they were not required to register with anyone else.
One bus driver, Morgan Mtsolo, said that some drivers have no choice but to overload and take the children because when they get to the pickup point, there are 90 children and if they leave them behind, parents threaten them with violence.
Other operators say they are forced to overload their vehicles to make a profit.
National Traffic Police inspector Isaac Sishuba said that if the vehicle is unroadworthy he is obligated to remove the licence disc to ensure the drivers fix their vehicles.
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