I have been part of dozens of conversations over the past week, relating to scholar transport vehicles.
Last week, a taxi carrying 29 schools kids, crashed on the N2 injuring several of them and killing a seven-year-old Grade 1 boy.
It’s one of the saddest things I have heard in a long time, especially since the child was decapitated in the accident.
Making this doubly awful is the fact that the driver was unlicensed, and so was his unroadworthy and overloaded taxi.
I had hoped that this sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore, but yet here we are.
Many people are blaming the parents for not checking that their kids are being taken to school safely.
And, yes, of course there is a measure of blame that sits with the parents.
But there are so many other aspects to this that needs to be considered.
Firstly, these are kids who live in Khayelitsha, but go to school in the CBD - a sad legacy of apartheid spatial planning and social division.
So these are parents trying to give their children better schooling, but they are faced with enormous challenges.
Besides huge school expenses, they have to overcome transport challenges, leaving them with very little choice but to go for the cheapest options.
On the other side of the equation, a taxi driver is trying to make a living and feed his own family.
So he resorts to overloading and not renewing his license.
These are inescapable social issues that we are dealing with.
And - as life gets more and more expensive - it also means that this sort of thing will keep on happening, until the causes are addressed.
We can contribute by stopping our shallow, peanut-
gallery criticism and actually helping.
When you pick your kids up from school, take a moment to inspect the taxi picking or dropping kids off.
Have a word with a driver. Or better still, take some of those kids in your own car to their destination.
And I will again appeal to government to accept that education is the most important thing to ensure our prosperity as a nation.
And to act accordingly.