“What was once actively planned under apartheid is often reproduced and compounded in ongoing, of course unwitting usually unintended, ways. For instance, one of the major commitments of the African National Congress (ANC) government, coming into power in 1994, was to build some 2 million low-cost subsidised houses within the space of 10 years. We have got quite close to doing that, which is an amazing achievement. But in order to meet the budget and to develop 2 million low-cost houses, of course they tended to be built where land was cheap on the far peripheries of the city. Therefore, in many respects mobility injustice has deepened in South Africa, unwittingly in the pos-apartheid era.”
“One of the challenges is that we have a subsidised train and bus networks but less people are utilising the system. The majority of the people within the city use the minibus taxi system, which is not subsidised. As these funds come from the national government, this is a challenge for the city. Passenger surveys show that people complain about the cost of the taxis. Safety is another major concern. A lot of our commuters use minibus taxis but they still fear in terms of their safety, crime at the taxi ranks and accidents on the roads.”
“The only thing I would like to bring up and there is huge debate on this issue but a lot of literature available in research, if we want to deal with traffic safety we have to treat it like a public health issue where you don't depend on people to do the right thing on their own. People will make mistakes, we have to make forgiving infrastructure. We have to make infrastructure which is more people orientated. People will always take the shortest path even if they know it is risky to do it. It doesn't matter whether you are South African or Indian, no matter which country you come from, as long as you are from this planet it is the same. So this aspect we will have to think very carefully and I think again, I think my main appeal and main point here would be here as a respondent, we will have to take traffic safety as a public health issue.”
