Hundreds of people walk home on the N2 in Cape Town on 3 August 2023 after taxi operators went on strike. (Photo: Gallo Images / Brenton Geach) 
The trigger for the strike by the SA National Taxi Council (Santaco) was the ongoing impoundment of minibus taxis by Cape Town officials for breaking certain laws.
The city says it is impounding taxis under the National Land Transport Act. It points out that many other councils in other provinces use the same policy and have often impounded taxis.
It is true that the law treats public transport drivers (which includes minibus taxi drivers and Uber drivers) differently from other drivers.
While a taxi driver may have their vehicle impounded for going through a red traffic light, an ordinary driver would not. The city says these policies have been in place for many years (it also says it has the right to impound your cellphone if you use it while driving).
To release the vehicle, a fee must be paid, which appears to increase for repeat offenders.
Santaco, and those who support it, say that they are only treated like this in Cape Town (this is not true — taxis are often impounded in other places, including Durban) and that they are being unfairly targeted.
They also claim that this is an existential threat to their industry — if a vehicle is being held by the city it cannot generate revenue. As a result, they claim, many minibuses are being repossessed by the financial institutions which funded the original purchase.
Santaco claimed in court that it could not be held responsible for the violence in Cape Town this week. It said there was no evidence that those responsible were its members and that it had publicly told its associations to not engage in criminal activity.
It’s hard to believe the taxi industry’s protestations.
The role of the DA
The fact that Cape Town and the Western Cape are run by the DA is a fundamental part of this issue.
The strike and the violence associated with it occur in a context in which the DA’s opponents claim it is trying to make the areas it governs different from the rest of the country. The fact that the DA is trying to take more legal powers from the national government (and that the Western Cape is the only province with its own constitution) gives ammunition to those who claim this province does not want to be part of South Africa.
While the minister of transport, Sindisiwe Chikunga, on Tuesday condemned the violence, she also said, “It can never be that a city will define itself outside the parameters of national laws and implement penalties that are out of sync with these laws. We therefore call on the city to immediately release, without any conditions, all vehicles impounded based on operating licences and leave those impounded in terms of the National Land Transport Act of 2009.”
The taxi industry is now likely to demand that its taxis are released, based on the minister’s comment, while the city will say, and has said, that the minister is deliberately misinterpreting the law.
This has led to Police Minister Bheki Cele and Cape Town’s mayor, Geordin Hill-Lewis, arguing with each other live on TV.
Considering South Africa’s history, the history of the taxi industry, and the racialised inequality that still defines our society, some people will try to define this in terms of race, to portray it as a “white DA administration” against a “black-owned industry”.
However, it is more complicated than that.
English-language talk radio has been ablaze with conversations about the strike.
Many callers who identify as black and coloured, from Cape Town and around the country, have talked about their experiences with taxis and how their lives have been endangered by taxi drivers.
They have been speaking for millions of people, the majority of whom are black, who bear the brunt of how taxi drivers operate and the violence associated with them.
(It’s worth mentioning that there are moments when members of the taxi industry have received praise across the board — taxi associations organised to prevent looting during the violence in 2021 and taxi drivers put their lives on the line to save people during floods).
The views of callers indicate that there is strong support for the City of Cape Town’s action, and that many people, across racial and class divides, support the rule of law, and believe the taxi industry cannot be above it.
This may mean that those who oppose the city are on the wrong side of the argument.
Perhaps.
Because this also goes in other directions.
In a society defined by race, the identities of those in charge matter.
Too many white men?
One of the major charges made by Chikunga, Police Minister Bheki Cele and others, is that the City of Cape Town has been “arrogant”.
This may carry a subtext, a reminder that those in charge of the city and involved in making all the decisions that matter are white.
In particular, both Chikunga and Cele have mentioned the safety and security head in Cape Town, JP Smith.
He and all the other main public role-players in this are white men, including Hill-Lewis and Premier Alan Winde.
This is a feature of the DA’s deployment, where for many years the party has been accused of appointing nearly all-white city and provincial cabinets.
Imagine for a moment, how different this national debate might have been if the mayor of Cape Town, the MMC for safety and security, and the premier of the Western Cape were black.
The fact the DA has insisted, repeatedly, on appointing local and provincial cabinets dominated by white men may have weakened the party dramatically.
While the national government may be accused of taking the side of the taxi industry for the moment, there is a much more fundamental issue at play.
The power of violence
The taxi industry is probably the most powerful organisation in our society outside of government. It has the power to defy every other sector.
It does this through the power of organisation and the power of violence.
It is aided in this by South Africa’s apartheid spatial geography; poor black people live in townships far away from their jobs. Taxis are the only way for many to get to work.
The taxi industry often operates outside the law; as a largely cash business, it is not clear that it is tax-compliant and any South African who has been on the roads in the past 20 years will know that minibus taxi drivers do not obey traffic laws.
For some, this makes the situation in Cape Town a stark fight between the rule of law on one side and the taxi industry on the other.
As security analyst Dr Hennie Lochner pointed out on SAfm on Tuesday morning, this may soon affect the national government.
This is because the Transport Ministry has said it will soon implement the Aarto legislation around the country. It will include a demerit system in which a driver could lose their licence for consistent law-breaking.
Aarto will fail completely if it does not apply to taxi drivers.
This means that the situation in Cape Town may well be an indication of whether the national government can implement its own legislation.
In the meantime, those with the political power, and the guns, will continue to fight.
And the vast majority will have no option but to trudge home and pray for better days. DM