If you’re wondering why, each time you turn around, there’s a new mafia-style protection racket, the untold story is the role that SA’s pampered politicians have played in giving birth to this Frankenstein’s monster.
Now, thanks to Johann Ferreira, whose father started the forerunner to bus company Intercape 51 years ago, we have a court case that puts a cabinet minister — in this case transport minister Fikile Mbalula — on the spot for turning a blind eye to this racket.
Sketched out in affidavits for a case heard in the Makhanda high court last week, it’s a deeply alarming tale of how corners of the business sector have become entirely besieged by thugs, left to fend for themselves by feckless politicians who, Ferreira says, “have played dead”.
Judge John Smith is expected to hand down his ruling in the next few days. If the evidence in court is any clue, it’s likely to be another scalding rebuke of Mbalula’s ineffective leadership — adding to the mounting criticism of his feeble stewardship of the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) and Transnet.
The story begins in 2015 when, Ferreira says, Intercape was first subjected to “intimidation and violence” by taxi associations out to protect their turf. It was, he says, “one prong of a deliberate stratagem of extortion”, alongside a demand that “long-distance bus operators increase their prices and reduce the number of buses operating any given route”.
Ferreira could have simply paid up, as others have done, but he didn’t, which is just as well for the 1.5-million people Intercape carries through the region every year.
The taxi associations, however, weren’t used to defiance. At first, they began threatening Intercape’s drivers, but it soon escalated into blocking buses from picking up customers.
Though Covid brought a brief reprieve, things escalated in 2021. Soon enough, Ferreira was told by these associations that Intercape could send only two buses to any town per day, and must hike prices. And, in a nod to the real Mafia, Intercape was told to “pay a cash levy” for using specific routes.
These demands, Ferreira said, were “plainly criminal”, so he refused — and the violence ramped up.
The risk of being shot or hit by a rock through a windscreen is now a daily reality in the lives of Intercape’s employees and passengers
— Johann Ferreira
In June 2021 at Cofimvaba, an entire bus was held at gunpoint; the next month, Intercape drivers were beaten up and a passenger was shot in the stomach; buses were frequently stoned; and stores selling Intercape tickets were threatened. In March this year, a driver was shot in the neck and leg at Intercape’s depot in Cape Town and, a month later, another driver, Bangikhaya Machana, was shot dead at that depot.
In April, Ferreira was told by “Siya” from the Cape Organisation for the Democratic Taxi Association that he could “make the problem go away” — all he had to do was “pay”.
So Ferreira wrote to Mbalula, and the MEC for transport in the Eastern Cape, Weziwe Tikana-Gxothiwe (who was subsequently axed), and implored them to intervene.
Unfortunately for him, Tikana-Gxothiwe did get involved. On May 27, she phoned Ferreira and told him to meet the taxi associations and thrash out a “route agreement”. And, until he’d reached that deal, she said, Intercape must suspend services on those routes.
Ferreira was gobsmacked. That’s patently illegal, he told her. His lawyers then wrote to Tikana-Gxothiwe, politely asking her to “refrain from advancing any criminal interests”.
Mbalula was almost as bad. He sent Ferreira a one-line email, offhandedly dismissing this as an “Eastern Cape matter”.
Meanwhile, on the roads, it was as awful as ever, with taxis now openly shooting at the buses.
Exasperated, Ferreira approached the court on July 5 to get it to force Mbalula and the MEC to do their job. “The risk of being shot or hit by a rock through a windscreen is now a daily reality in the lives of Intercape’s employees and passengers,” he said.
Reading the court papers, what strikes you is how shameless the extortion is. Besides illegal instructions to fix prices, the Tsomo Taxi Association even wrote a letter to the management of Shoprite’s Tsomo store, signed by chair SS Gwadela, telling it to “stop selling bus tickets … as of today”.
At one point in 2019, Mbalula swanned in, convened a “task team” (which, predictably, did nothing), and then vanished. In court, Mbalula’s acting director-general went so far as to argue that just because nothing came from this task team, this “is by no means attributable to a lack of commitment and effort on the part of the minister.”
Which, it must be said, is an odd argument. Effectively, the director-general is, pardon the pun, throwing Mbalula under the bus by claiming that he really wants to make a difference, he’s just ineffectual.
Ferreira now wants the court to order Mbalula and the MEC to develop a comprehensive plan to tackle this lawlessness. But the fact that neither of them has yet done this suggests they either don’t know of their legal obligation under the Transport Act to “promote the safety of passengers” and provide public transport that “is safe”, or they just don’t care.
When Smith hands down his judgment, expect much sound and fury from Mbalula. But then, not for nothing has he earned the moniker “Mr Fixfokol’ — a well-deserved marriage of his overly ambitious and self-applied title of “Mr Fix” and his earlier nickname of “Fear Fokol”.
But then again, when you only ever travel in the cotton-wool swaddling of a pack of blue-light cars, whose drivers themselves have little regard for the law, the visceral fear of being shot at merely for being a passenger in a bus isn’t exactly a relatable concept.
He might as well have said: “Let them eat cake.”
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