Many reasons have been put forward to explain the carnage: the state of our roads, the roadworthiness of the vehicles and the training and experience of the drivers.
The last point has been worsened by the fact that poorly-trained and inexperienced drivers have found a way of surviving on the roads without much censure because of corruption. Traffic police have been guilty by omission and commission, aiding and abetting much of the misbehaviour on the roads because they benefit from it.
But the main reason for the carnage — and this has never been exposed — may be that operating licences are being dished out to any who can afford to buy minibuses without putting in place a stringent monitoring system that ensures that the buses are constantly and thoroughly inspected for faults, overloading and speeding.
History might inform us on this. When the Zimbabwe United Omnibus Company was still really working and was the pride of the country, all its buses would begin their trips from a garage. This meant that each bus was certified fit for each day’s trip. The drivers were clean and well-mannered. Then, there would be inspectors strategically placed along the route to monitor the bus’s progress and also check bad driver practices along the way.
On the contrary, no one has any idea where most of our privately-owned omnibuses begin or end their journeys. No one monitors them. The passengers’ lives are placed in the hands of dirty and uncouth thugs who place the value of each human life they carry at the level of the dollar fare they collect.This is wrong and dangerous.
There ought to be certain benchmarks that each bus fleet must meet before they are licensed to ply our roads. Fleets that still operate like pirate taxis must be taken off our roads before the toll in human lives mounts any further.
