Intervention needed in taxi violence

THE South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) should be commended for being quick to denounce the violence and looting that gripped KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng.

It should be applauded for being part of the solution when the unrest threatened to destabilise the country.

Our wish is that it would take a similar stance in the taxi violence in the Western Cape which has claimed the lives of more than 80 people, including innocent commuters and bystanders, since the start of the year.

While taxi drivers in KZN and Gauteng were hailed heroes, it is a different story in the Western Cape.

The war between the Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association (Cata) and Congress of Democratic Taxi Association (Codeta) over routes has been devastating to innocent commuters. A four-month-old baby was caught in the crossfire last week.

The fighting has been ongoing for more than two years and there seems to be no end in sight. It has escalated to the point where innocent bus drivers are being targeted.

This has resulted in thousands of commuters being stranded, some forced to walk more than 25km in the rain from the CBD to their homes.

Social media images of hundreds of commuters pushing to get into a bus during the peak of the third wave of Covid-19 infections are beyond heartbreaking.

The war has further laid bare the DA-led government’s inability to enforce the law, especially when it is the poor that are suffering. We doubt the same attitude would have been adopted had this been affecting its MyCiTi bus service in affluent areas.

Its new Transport MEC Daylin Mitchell has been found wanting, unable to take action against the rival associations.

The same government continues to want the world to believe the Western Cape is the best-run province in the country, even when the public transport system has collapsed. Even the vocal Transport Minister Fikile “Mr Fix” Mbalula failed to fix the issue this week. This demonstrates that Codeta and Cata have put their interests before the people that ensure the survival of their businesses, while Santaco has seemingly left it to the rival groups to resolve their differences.

Now that all the efforts have failed, the ministers in the security cluster must intervene and take control of the situation.

At stake here are the lives of commuters who just want to provide for their families.