The recent flare-up of taxi violence in Cape Town, emanating largely from conflict over permits allocated along the Bellville-Paarl route, revealed the extent to which the minibus taxi industry controls public transport, and, by extension, the city’s economy.
Western Cape MEC for transport & public works Daylin Mitchell says minibus taxis provide 70% of Cape Town’s public transport, ferrying about 650,000 people to and from work daily. Before the failure of Metrorail, minibus taxis catered to 32% of the city’s public transport needs, he says.
The severe disruption of minibus taxi services across the city last month because of the continuing conflict between the Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association (Cata) and Congress for Democratic Taxi Associations (Codeta) left hundreds of thousands of people struggling to get to and from work. Taxi-related violence led to 24 murders in July, bringing the death toll so far this year to 86.
The taxi industry’s power is pronounced in Khayelitsha — Cape Town’s largest township — as well as adjacent Nyanga, Philippi and Gugulethu. Metrorail’s central line service to these areas has not operated since 2019 because of vandalism, theft and crime, says Metrorail spokesperson Riana Scott. It would cost R1.2bn to fix this line, she says, and involve moving communities that have built informal houses across the rails.
The MyCiTi bus service connecting Khayelitsha to the city has been closed since April 2019 because of a dispute among the three vehicle operating companies on the route.
Commuters were left with only the Golden Arrow bus service, which also came under attack, leading the company to halve its 1,100-strong operational fleet in July, according to spokesperson Bronwen Dyke-Beyer.
It is not possible to quantify the exact economic impact of the taxi violence on the local economy, says Mitchell’s spokesperson, Ntomboxolo Makoba-Somdaka.
"Many businesses were negatively affected as staff members struggled to get to and from work," she says.
Some businesses put their staff up in hotels. But people lost jobs because of the disruption, says Khayelitsha Development Forum chairperson Ndithini Tyhido.
Though the violence has abated following negotiations and an agreement between the parties on August 2, Tyhido says it will flare up again unless the "structural arrangements" on routes and route permits are addressed.
This has led to concerns that employers might avoid hiring people who rely on public transport and live in areas such as Nyanga and Khayelitsha that are vulnerable to the disruption of transport.
Even if employees managed to hold onto jobs despite struggling to get to work, those earning by the hour, such as Anele Ndamazi, suffered pay cuts.
Ndamazi, 21, who travels from Gugulethu to his job as a general cleaner at a fast-food outlet in the city centre, says that when the taxis aren’t running he has to wait in long queues for a bus, which then slowly winds its way through various suburbs before arriving in the CBD. Despite rising earlier, he was often as much as two hours late for work, which meant he lost money.
Nosiphiwe Bolani, a manager at a food retailer in the city centre, struggled to travel in from Philippi. Bolani says she had to walk for 30 minutes every morning to find a taxi not affiliated to Cata or Codeta, risking being mugged on the way. The shop where she works had a drop in customers during July, she says, because fewer people were coming into the city. The shop often had to open with a skeleton staff because workers arrived late. She says that normally there is a queue of customers waiting for the shop to open, but this was not the case in July.
Strong and determined law enforcement intervention, as well as prosecutions, are necessary to end the taxi industry’s use of violence as a means of getting what it wants, says Jenni Irish-Qhobosheane, senior analyst at Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime.
Irish-Qhobosheane says there are "known mafiosi" in the taxi industry who are "untouchable".
She says some have been arrested but prosecution failed for various reasons. These criminals have to be profiled, arrested and successfully prosecuted.
Whenever taxi violence erupts, she says, there is a tendency to "move to negotiations", as happened in Cape Town.
However, not all conflicts should be mediated, because every time the government tries to enforce regulations, there is an increase in violence, resulting in authorities backing off again, she adds.
The taxi industry also uses its power to disrupt public transport interventions that may decrease its hold over commuters.
Additional reporting by Peter Luhanga
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