Can you spot what’s wrong with this statement from the South African National Taxi Council (Santaco)? “It is with great sorrow and regret that we take notice of the violence and destruction of property and the loss of life that occurred over the past few days and this morning. We are sensitive to public sentiment and do not wish to alienate the public by actions that hurt or injure them.”
Santaco was responding to an order issued by judge Patrick Gamble last Sunday, telling its affiliates and members not to attack Golden Arrow buses and ordering striking drivers not to intimidate or harass passengers.
The statement seems to imply — no, let me rephrase that in a less euphemistic way — the statement means the following: we’re sorry that the burnt Golden Arrow buses, the fact that hospitals couldn’t perform operations because staff couldn’t get to work, the huge cost to the economy, the terrible violence, the terrorised children and the people who were killed make us look bad. It’s super damaging for our brand.
At this point, you might want to point out that they should be more concerned about the actual victims of the violence they have caused. But no, it turns out that Santaco is actually the victim here. “We are especially aggrieved by the perception of the public that we are lawless.”
Oh no! Now South Africans will think that the industry that breaks the laws of the road thousands of times a day might conceivably be lawless! That’s a bit of a shocker.
To be fair, there is some of that anodyne US thoughts and prayers™ nonsense in Santaco’s statement too. The bit about how bad dead people are for the taxi brand is the very first paragraph of the statement though, which does rather show where Santaco’s priorities lie.
The organisation does kindly point out to its members that they’re actually in the business of transporting people from A to B, rather than into the grave. “Members are reminded that we are a service industry, we are not a terror organisation and do not conduct ourselves in that manner.”
If you need to remind your drivers that they’re not primarily in the business of terrorising their fellow citizens, you might need to rethink your HR onboarding policies.
Santaco does kindly point out to its members that they’re actually in the business of transporting people from A to B, rather than into the grave
At the height of the taxi strike, with all access roads to the airport blockaded and vehicles being stoned and set alight, I had to organise for 20 people to make their international flights at staggered times throughout the day.
We’d just spent four days discussing how misinformation spreads, the ways that the information landscape is manipulated by bad actors for their own nefarious ends, and how to combat that. I’m not quite sure why people working in this space use the term “bad actors”. They aren’t referring to the cast of Marvel movies, but to individuals, organisations and states which manipulate the meaning of things that are happening to cause harm.
It was fascinating watching how the taxi violence was being manipulated in real time to drive different agendas. There was the obligatory and crude racist one, but also those by political parties. And as you can imagine, the South Africans at this conference had to spend a lot of time explaining the taxi strikes to the delegates from the rest of the world and the reasons behind it, as well as the perhaps more pressing ongoing situation.
I was happy to see that many of the explanations weren’t just about how taxi drivers have absolutely no regard for the rules of the road, but also provided their perspective as members of an exploitative industry. In true South African fashion, there was dark humour when we proudly revealed that there’s even a local band called Taxi Violence.
I’ve made fun of the taxi industry’s attempt to portray itself as the victim in a paragraph above, in the specific context of the nasty public thinking that these unblemished, self-proclaimed paragons of society are actually lawless. But it is undeniable that taxi drivers are victims — of history as well as their own industry.
In 2019 Lee Randall, an occupational therapist who has studied the industry extensively, told the Mail & Guardian that the working conditions in the taxi industry were among the worst she’d come across.
Taxi drivers, she told the publication, are subjected to “long working hours, relatively poor earnings and a widespread (or even universal) lack of very basic safety nets such as UIF [Unemployment Insurance Fund] and Compensation Fund cover. Benefits such as medical aid, funeral insurance, pension or provident funds and even basic paid leave of any type seem to be unheard of luxuries for the average taxi driver.”
The numbers are big. Data from Stats SA’s Quarterly Labour Force surveys, quoted on academic website The Conversation Africa, suggests there are about 250,000 minibus taxi drivers in the country, with about the same number of minibus taxis. Stats SA’s 2020 National Household Travel Survey indicates 60% of households report taxis as their main mode of transport.
The Mail & Guardian claims more than 15-million commuters are transported daily, and that the industry is estimated to generate annual profits of at least R90bn. “Taxis are considered the pillar of public transport, accounting for 65%, followed by buses at 20% and trains at 15%,” the publication reports.
In the same article, a taxi driver gives insight into the working conditions. “Owners dismiss anyhow. Sometimes it depends on what you have done. For example, if you failed to reach the target because of traffic and you give the owner R300 instead of R500, he will insist that I took his money and you wouldn’t be given a chance as a driver to explain what happened. He will say I must leave the keys and the taxi. Just like that, you’re fired.
“Another employer will fire you for being involved in an accident. However, sometimes the car gets broken and when it comes back from the panel beaters, it’d come with a different driver. You’d only know that you’ve been fired when your colleagues ask where you [are] because they see your car in the taxi rank. Rights for taxi drivers do not exist. We are oppressed by the owners of the cars and they treat us as their slaves.”
And here’s the kicker, from Siyabulela Fobosi, a public transport researcher. “Fobosi says the reason taxi owners are not warming up to the idea of regulation is to avoid complying with fair labour practices, a view shared by taxi drivers.”
It’s the people making the money who are the primary cause of the problems, rather than those who are struggling to survive
As is so often the case, it’s the people making the money who are the primary cause of the problems, rather than those who are struggling to survive and are forced into breaking the law.
There’s also a delicious hypocrisy about the way Santaco operates. When long-serving taxi drivers held a protest to demand that they be promoted and given the right to be taxi owners, they were all dismissed.
Which isn’t to excuse the violence, let me hasten to add — just to provide some perspective. Explaining to non-South Africans the historical inequalities that brought us to this point is necessary, but when you’re doing it just before the driver of the van hired to take delegates to the airport explains to them that he can’t do so any more because he is in fear of being stoned, his vehicle set alight, and possibly killed, it loses some of its force as a mitigating factor.
One of the delegates at my conference was from Canada (and about to miss his 28-hour flight back home), and he pointed out a difference between the 2022 Canadian truckers protest and our taxi protests. In Canada, some police officials were photographed standing in sympathy with the protesters, which wasn’t something that happened here. In Canada, though, the protests themselves became a proxy for US white supremacist groups, who used the grievances of the truckers to drive a far-right agenda.
So while we are entirely justified in decrying the violence, lawlessness and general disregard for fellow citizens displayed by this taxi strike, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that these are all symptoms of the usual South African larger problem. This is what we need to be alert to here — people and groups who are going to use grievances that are legitimate to drive polarisation in our country.
Nobody is asking you to forgive the striking drivers and their opportunistic camp followers the specific acts of destruction they are dealing out. But once the dust has settled, we’re going to have to at least try to deal with the seemingly intractable inequalities that have brought us to this point.
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