The Public Transport Crisis in South Africa: Through the Eyes of the Four Revolutions

Abstract

Debates on the Fourth Industrial Revolution have tended not to focus on the direct relationship between all four technological revolutions and transportation – a crucial element of all technological surges. At the same time, scholarship on transportation has generally ignored the significance of transportation in all the revolutions. This article therefore seeks to strike a balance between these two extremes by showing that all the technological revolutions were also about transportation. In other words, the debates on the technological advances provide scholars, researchers, engineers, and working-class organisations with the space to foreground transport as an issue requiring special attention, especially in South Africa where the public transport system faces many challenges. Critically applying the prism of the four industrial revolutions, the article demonstrates that South Africa lags behind from a transport perspective, and still relies on the transportation of the Second Industrial Revolution when other countries are utilising technologies ofthe Fourth Industrial Revolution. Compounding matters is that even transport technologies invented in the 1800s are being stolen and vandalised, and the maintenance of the system is extremely poor. The article then submits that these transport problems may be solved by mobilisation and advocacy led by working-class and poor communities negatively affected by the crisis.

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Reflections on the conceptualisation and practices of community engagement as a core function of universities

“…South Africa and most countries across the globe are facing what Filippini (2017) refers to as "organic crisis", a term that connotes a multitude of crises in which systems disintegrate and lose their regularity and predictability, while new replacement systems have not started to evolve organically or to be created. The multiple dimensions of the crisis are evident from, for example, climate change and the environmental crisis, infrastructure decay (New Frame 2021), corruption, energy and water crises, hunger and poverty, crime, mental health crisis, genderbased violence (Chelala 2022), and transport crisis (Hlatshwayo 2022). Other crises include rising costs of living (Whiting 2022), and brain drain which has seen South Africa lose to other countries up to 53 per cent of talented graduates of all races, as well as top academics, medical doctors and nurses (Bloomberg 2022).…”