Daily Maverick
Dailymaverick logo

Opinionistas

This article is an Opinion, which presents the writer’s personal point of view. The views expressed are those of the author/authors and do not necessarily represent the views of Daily Maverick.

Health and safety standards the missing link in road accidents and food poisoning

Corruption, maladministration, braskap and the buying and selling of regulations and standards leads to disastrous outcomes.
Ismail Lagardien
By Ismail Lagardien
24 Oct 2025
Facebook
0


Issues of standards and regulations get a bad rap for reasons that seem understandable — on the surface of things. But it’s not all straightforward, though, these things never are.

In South Africa’s social and political contexts, responses to setting or policing standards are invariably based on the country’s history, the transition from one polity to the next with attendant expectations, hopes and fears, and the objections of free marketeers who just love deregulation.

We often hear that there is, or that there has been, a “drop in standards”. This has to a large extent to do with the belief that “things worked better” during the previous era because “standards were high”, and/or that standards have been lowered to enable social progression.

“Better” is an evaluative system, it probably requires explanation or a presentation of metrics. In this sense it’s always worth asking: “What was better than what?”

Anyway, the standout example is in education, where there has been a lot of anger and rage (very often misdirected) over the perceived lowering of pass rates for learners. There is some validity to all this. It suffices to say, however, that progression through education systems is dependent on many more variables than simply passing final exams.

I should hastily add two or three things. First, if you’re going to write a final exam in pharmaceutical studies, it’s probably a good thing to get high grades in biology, chemistry and, well, pharmacology. History or a second language may be less important, but remember that you may have to provide advice to someone who speaks a different language.

Second, and this is a personal obsession, based on experience, it is probably good to know how to read and write…

In the third instance, I should declare that I am a C-grade student, and I had to sell body parts to make it past barriers to entry to the three or four passages into higher learning. Actually, no, I did not sell body parts. Social progression is a good thing, until it is not, or when it leads to entitlement, and that thing that the late Tito Mboweni and I commiserated over several years ago: braskap. I will explain below.

Disastrous outcomes of corruption


The news of yet another fatal bus crash on South African roads was simultaneously startling, anger-inducing, and yet somehow unsurprising. A few things in the report stood out.

After the crash, “a preliminary report from the Road Traffic Management Corporation… revealed that the driver drove at excessive speeds, that one of the bus’s brakes was not operational at the time of the crash, and none of the four brakes on the trailer it was towing were working. The investigation also revealed that the trailer’s suspension was in poor condition.”

The bus and trailer were not in “a roadworthy condition” because of “a defective braking system and the poorly repaired suspension of the trailer”.

Despite this, the vehicle was issued a roadworthy certificate… Here we see the way that corruption, maladministration, braskap and the buying and selling of regulations and standards leads to disastrous outcomes.

Corruption and maladministration in the state have been written about, discussed and cursed for more than a decade. When braskap enters the buying and selling of regulations, the country’s problems seem (even more) intractable.

Braskap


This is how to understand braskap. A guy walks into a car licensing office. He requests a licence to operate his private car or taxi. An officer asks for certificates to show that the vehicle had passed standards and regulations for operating a car.

The guy tells the officer (something like): “Hey, bra, you know, we are struggling. You have a nice job. My family are poor. My children need to go to school. We are suffering, bra.”

This is, at once, emotional blackmail, but it is, also, solidarity mining and blame shifting — with deleterious outcomes for standards, and tragic consequences for human life.

The solidarity mining is what explains braskap. Or is it the other way around? The point is we are bras (brothers, friends) and need to stand together against a common enemy — “the Man” who has kept us down.

I remember how a neighbour in Eldorado Park would borrow a set of new tires (or windshield wipers) to get his car through a roadworthy test, and replace them with the original (bald) tires after a roadworthy certificate had been issued.

It is at that intersection where braskap and the issue of regulatory certificates edge everyone closer to road accidents, and the tragedy of mass deaths when commuter buses crash because their roadworthy certificates were bought.

To be clear, this collusion and “collaboration” works up and down society; from dusty streets to the air conditioned skyscrapers where CEOs work, reportedly, in the interests of shareholders, or to shore up and strengthen their industry.

Corporate elites do it in a combination of bravado, zeal, a belief that they are “doing God’s work,” cartel behaviour, overconfidence and entitlement strengthened by favourable regulatory environments.

If you are found in flagrante delicto, you can always claim that you have God on your side…

One important difference between corporations and the streets is that governments need corporations more than they do people on the street, to whom they turn only during elections, and who are considered (by the government and corporations) as inputs (labourers) or consumers who drive demand. Firms or corporations cannot survive without drawing on institutions of state, and support from the political environment.

So, much like the way that braskap reproduces social ties “on the streets”, such ties are formed by common membership on corporate boards and intra-industry “collaboration” within capital’s spatial reach. It helps, of course, that they have expensive lawyers on the books, in case things get out of hand.

Health and sanitation


It is in health and sanitation that the dropping of standards is equally bad for societies. Some of us, of a certain generation, have had many delicious and quite filling meals at shisa nyamas by the side of the road.

My first experience was at Orlando Stadium, in the early 1970s, when matchday was marked by shisa nyama and pap. Years later, at Sowetan, there would be a feast of shisa nyama, pap and atchar at lunchtime on Sunday. One day a colleague got sick. Food poisoning. Another one fell. I had cramps late into the day and night. We never did bother with health and sanitary standards. We went back to the shisa nyama the next week, and all was well.

A problem with informal food outlets is that there are (apparently) no health and sanitation regulation standards or enforcement. Besides the resort to braskap (“Hai bra, I’m just trying to earn some money to pay for my children’s education”), we go our merry way. Today, there are any number of roadside food stalls; from shisa nyamas anywhere in Soweto or Soshanguve to chicken tikka, or akni stalls across the Cape Flats.

If you buy food from a registered outlet or a restaurant, there are health and hygiene regulations that have to be adhered to. There are almost none that apply to informal roadside food stalls.

This is not to say people don’t have a right to create small businesses or informal trading ventures! It is simply that health and hygiene standards for a formal restaurant are higher than they are for local roadside shisa nyamas or the chicken tikka grill in Athlone.

I should conclude. In both cases, standards for road safety and informal food provision have been lowered for reasons that are well known. Small businesses are the backbone of economies around the world — across Latin America, East and South East Asia, and Africa.

Across Japan, South Korea and South East Asia, small businesses employ up to 80% of the workforce, and constitute much of the economic output. In South Africa, or at street-cart vendors across Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand (I have avoided roadside food in India), health and sanitation is a crapshoot. It is generally safe, but buyer beware.

The difference is that if you get sick from eating at a formal establishment, chances are that you will receive some kind of compensation, or at least an apology. In South Africa, we either ignore it all and move to the next case of food poisoning, or a tragic road accident, and tamper with health and safety regulations for any number of reasons — mainly because we are scared.

The next fatal road accident is just around the bend. DM