It would be great to write a piece on how operational excellence can be improved through a vigorous safety culture. After all, the world’s leading manufacturers have long understood that safe workplaces are productive workplaces. Employees who feel safe are generally more engaged, quality improves, downtime falls, and continuous improvement becomes far easier to achieve.

But unfortunately, after looking into South Africa’s safety record, I realised we have a far bigger problem.

Before we can talk about operational excellence, we first have to talk about basic safety.

And when I say safety, I’m talking about far more than factories. I’m talking about government buildings, municipal facilities, roads, hospitals, construction sites and workplaces generally. In too many places, safety has become an afterthought rather than a way of life.

Walk around almost any government- or municipal-owned community facility and the warning signs are often obvious. Fire extinguishers are years past their service dates. Emergency exits are poorly marked or obstructed. Routine maintenance is neglected. These may seem like small matters, but they reveal something much bigger: a culture where safety is too often treated as somebody else’s problem.

Before getting into what is happening across the country, I want to make an observation about ordinary tradespeople.

During the refurbishment of my property in Cape Town, I worked with a wide variety of contractors. Getting reliable tradespeople was often difficult, and communication could sometimes be frustrating. Yet one thing struck me.

Most of them worked safely.

Why?

Because it is their livelihood.

You seldom find them working without gloves or handling ladders carelessly. Some simply refuse to climb onto roofs because they know they lack the experience and don’t want to risk their lives. Others clean up meticulously before leaving a site. They understand that one serious injury could leave them unable to work for weeks or months.

Unlike employees of large corporations, many have no pension to fall back on, limited unemployment protection and no generous medical aid. In a dystopian, non-utopian country where so much else is uncertain, their own safety is one of the few things they can still control.

That simple reality creates a stronger safety mindset than many organisations manage to build through endless policies and procedures.

Unfortunately, when we widen the lens to South Africa as a whole, the picture becomes deeply disturbing.

South Africa continues to record one of the highest road fatality rates in the world, with well over 9,000 people dying on our roads each year. Driver behaviour—speeding, reckless driving and alcohol abuse—remains the primary cause of most crashes. Crime continues to shape how people live their daily lives, with many South Africans unwilling to walk alone at night because they simply do not feel safe.

In healthcare, studies continue to point to weaknesses in patient safety culture, while many workplaces, particularly smaller businesses, struggle to implement even the most basic safety systems.

Then there is government.

Here the situation becomes even more alarming.

The George building collapse, the Verulam collapse and the more recent Ormonde disaster all exposed what investigators have repeatedly described as systemic failures rather than isolated accidents. Warning signs were missed. Regulations were ignored. Oversight failed.

Even government’s own buildings tell a worrying story. The evacuation of the SAPS Telkom Towers headquarters because of serious health and safety concerns, together with hundreds of neglected or abandoned state-owned buildings, speaks volumes about the condition of public assets.

The issue is no longer whether South Africa has enough legislation.

It does.

The real problem is that too often we fail to enforce it consistently.

When rules become optional, accidents become inevitable.

The private sector presents a more mixed picture.

Large manufacturers and mining companies generally employ experienced occupational health and safety managers, conduct regular audits and maintain formal safety systems. Some organisations have developed world-class safety cultures that rival the very best internationally.

But even here, safety is too often driven by compliance rather than conviction.

It becomes another audit to pass.

Another inspection to survive.

Another file to complete.

That is not a safety culture.

A genuine safety culture exists when every employee, from the managing director to the newest apprentice, genuinely believes that nobody should go home injured at the end of the day.

The challenge becomes even greater among many small and medium-sized businesses. Government simply does not have the capacity to inspect every factory, warehouse and workshop across the country. Many operate for years with little or no meaningful oversight.

I remember looking across Cape Town one morning and seeing two factories burning in Paarden Eiland. That evening I learnt that both had suffered major fires. Similar incidents occur in Johannesburg, Durban and elsewhere with depressing regularity.

Meanwhile, product quality across many sectors appears to be deteriorating. Personally, I have bought an astonishing number of faulty products over the past few years, from everyday foodstuffs to furniture and tools. That decline in quality deserves an article of its own.

The point is that operational excellence does not suddenly appear because a company adopts the latest management philosophy.

It begins with discipline.

It begins with doing the ordinary things consistently well.

And nowhere is that more evident than in safety.

The irony is that companies with mature safety cultures rarely speak only about safety. They speak about quality, productivity, continuous improvement, employee engagement and customer satisfaction as well. They understand that these are not separate objectives. They reinforce one another.

A safe workplace is usually a better organised workplace.

A better organised workplace usually produces better products.

Better products create happier customers.

That is the pathway to operational excellence.

South Africa will undoubtedly get there in some organisations. Many outstanding companies already demonstrate what is possible.

But as a country, we are not there yet.

Before safety can become a competitive advantage, it must first become a national habit. Before operational excellence becomes commonplace, safe work practices must become non-negotiable.

In a dystopian, non-utopian society where standards have slipped in too many areas of public life, the great awakening must begin with something surprisingly simple: getting the basics right.

Only then can safety become more than compliance.

Only then can it become the foundation upon which genuine operational excellence is built.

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