Taxi Hell

[This article was written with a foreign audience in mind]

South African commuters are up in arms against their country’s taxi drivers, who have become a major road menace resulting many times in death for passengers, motorists and pedestrians alike.

The taxi phenomenon began as an experiment in Black Self-Empowerment using free-market capitalism during the apartheid years under PW Botha. Known as “Black taxis”, the large white minivans are driven by Black Africans and used to transport mostly poor, Black Africans. This experiment quickly became the most successful of these types of campaigns on the continent.

After the fall of Apartheid, the Black taxis quickly became the number one threat on the roadways of metropolitan South Africa. Thanks in no small part to the crumbling infrastructure of the country, where traffic lights often cease to work for days and potholes large enough to break a car’s axle are common, taxi drivers in South Africa have developed their own rules of the road that seem to have been written for the screenplay of a Mad Max film, with traffic cops turning a blind eye to their reckless driving, horn honking and blaringly loud music.

Unlike other major cities such as New York and London, taxis in Johannesburg and Pretoria are hardly regulated. The barely-road-worthy jalopies are driven until they no longer run. Their operators often do repairs themselves on-the-fly and as cheaply as possible, substituting cardboard for worn-out break pads. It is not uncommon to see the rickety minivans swerving in and out of traffic at breakneck speeds, their backs packed to standing-room capacity with passengers.

Taxi drivers’ reckless driving has often been the reason for major traffic accidents in South Africa. Stories abound of Black taxis nearly hitting pedestrians, who do not have the right of way when it comes to these vehicles. Recently, a taxi driver killed 16-year old Bernadine Kruger when he rammed her motor scooter from behind and drove over her body. Kruger, who was on her way to Grade 11 school in Pretoria, was killed instantly by the taxi driver. Many within the Afrikaner community believe the Black taxi driver’s killing of young Bernadine was in fact a hate crime. The driver, Percyval Matji, 31, has been charged with culpable homicide, and has been released on a R1,000 bail.

Black taxis are also very aggressive when it comes to competing with each other for fares. There are many stories of how traffic accidents have happened because two or more Black taxis fighting over waiting customers.

The Black taxis are not very accommodating toward mass transit, either. A planned Bus Rapid Transport System (BRT) in Cape Town has caused rioting and several deaths. A couple was burnt to death while another was shot and wounded in the head in separate incidents related to Black taxi protests against the BRT in the Western Cape back in Decemeber 2008. Thousands of Cape Town commuters were left stranded last February after Black taxi drivers rioted during rush hour traffic in protest against the BRT plan. Feeling they were being excluded from the new plans, Black taxi drivers pelted cars and buses with stones, and blocked off busstop areas. Police fired rubber bullets at the rampaging protesters.

The Black taxi protests have continued on until today, with blockade protests against BRT bringing Johannesburg to a standstill Tuesday and resulting in one bus driver being shot and seriously wounded. “We will kill and bring this town to its knees, if they go through with the Rapid bus system. There will be no 2010 soccer and no confederation cup if they continue,” one taxi driver told reporters. The taxi protests pose the most serious threat to the World Cup Soccer Games scheduled for South Africa in 2010, with some starting to wonder if the massive public works projects underway will be allowed to be finished in time for the event.

Taxi owners have threatened to spread their protests countrywide if the BRT project continues. This poses a serious threat to the South African economy at a time when it is only now starting to feel the pinches of the worldwide downturn. The pictures shown here show no police officers because they were elsewhere tackling protests in other areas. Should even half of all taxi drivers go on such a strike at the same time, the entire country could be shut down.

The Black taxi problem has become the latest in a long string of grievances that comprise Gatvol, Afrikaans for “fed up”. One group, Afriforum, has begun a “Clamp Down On Taxis Campaign” which encourages commuters to take pictures of the taxi infractions and them into the group. Afriforum has already gotten thousands of such photographs, according to group leader Kalie Kriel. Another group, Genoeg Is Genoeg ("enough is enough"), has set up a Facebook account that addresses the menace on South Africa’s roadways.