Foundations could promote culture of safety
THE MONTH of October has been declared as Transport Month in
South Africa and foundations based on the legacies of great leaders like Chief Albert Luthuli, Dag Hammarskjöld, Samora Machel and Nelson Mandela, could contribute to safety culture.
Foundations based on their legacies should strategise to call forth the best aspirations in people, individually and collectively, including more effort to prevent premature death, injuries, suffering and the fruitless spending of resources.
Transportation safety is one of the greatest risks of our age, as the United Nations recognises in its Decade for Road Safety. For example, 14 000 people die on roads annually.
Chief Albert Luthuli is synonymous with humility, racial integration, and human dignity. He was president of the ANC from 1952 to his untimely death on a railway track in 1967, and the first person in Africa and the second person in the diaspora to win a Nobel Peace Prize, in 1961.
In his Nobel acceptance speech, he had said: “I accept it also as an honour to South Africa and to the continent of Africa, to its entire people, whatever their race, colour or creed.” On July 21, 1967 Luthuli was struck by a train while walking near his KZN home.
His foundation could, among other goals, promote railway safety in Africa and the world. The Chief Albert Luthuli Foundation could partner with the National Department of Transport, railway operators and other bodies to promote railway safety. Foundations have minimal restrictions in their activities and are well positioned to champion noble causes. The annual Chief Albert Luthuli memorial lecture should also be used to promote railway safety, along with the noble virtues that he cultivated.
The death of Dag Hammarskjöld in a plane crash was devastating for Sweden and to the intellectual world. He was a Swedish diplomat, economist, and prolific writer. Hammarskjöld was the second secretary-general of the United Nations. He died on a peace mission to Congo.
US president John F Kennedy lamented the death of “one of the greatest statesmen of our century”. He was en route to negotiate a ceasefire when his Douglas DC-6 airliner, SE-BDY, crashed near Ndola in Zambia.
Twenty-six years later, Mozambican president Samora Machel died when a Tupolev Tu-134 crashed in the Lebombo range near Mbuzini on the SA border with Mozambique. Machel was on his way back from an international meeting in Lusaka, Zambia. The Dag Hammarskjold Foundation and the Samora Machel Foundation could form a partnership in supporting aviation safety in Africa. The haunting memorial at Mbuzini could be used to promote travel safety, and the annual Dag Hammarskjold and Samora Machel memorial lectures could promote common brotherhood and sisterhood as well as airline safety.
Nelson Mandela had lost a son and a great grandchild in road traffic incidents. He shared the pain of travel loss with his widow, Graça Machel. Can Themba wrote in Drum magazine some years ago about dying: “Death is desolate, even if your loved ones can put their tender hands on your forehead. Death is lonely and sad if it meets you on the road away from home”.