Taxi strike havoc cannot be resolved by City of Cape Town’s heavy-handed approach

The ongoing taxi strike has laid bare lack of leadership by the City of Cape Town and exposed the huge gulf between itself and national government, on how best to implement transport laws for the benefit of all.

The situation has gone out of control, causing much distress to citizens, deaths, violence and triggering opportunistic looting of local businesses by thugs.

While South Africa is a constitutional democracy, with no-one being above the law, the havoc we have seen in Cape Town – a city priding itself as a tourist attraction – surely calls for cool heads and cannot be resolved by the heavy-handed approach applied by MMC JP Smith and executive mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis.

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The unprecedented impounding of at least 6 000 taxis under the guise of enforcing traffic bylaws has proven costly for Cape Town – having led to the massive strike by the taxi industry, to the inconvenience of commuters, especially those staying in townships of Gugulethu, Nyanga, Langa, Mbekweni and Paarl.

As it is the case with most of South Africa, apartheid spatial planning has ensured that blacks live in townships, in the periphery of cities where they work, with taxis the mostly used mode of transport.

While the ugly violence associated with the strike should be condemned, the impact caused by the impounding of taxis on the poorest of the poor of Cape Town, should be a matter of concern to Smith and Hill-Lewis.

They are among the privileged few who stay in affluent suburbs, without being concerned about how their children travel to school.

What I have found astonishing in the application of transport laws in Cape Town has been how traffic officers have treated motorists differently to taxi drivers.

Overloading, speeding, driving a vehicle with an expired disc or not in a good condition, should warrant a traffic fine and not the overzealous impounding we have witnessed in the Mother City.

While condemning the violence and calling for an end to the crippling taxi strike, Transport Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga has this week accused the City of Cape Town of targeting taxi drivers with bylaws going beyond what is allowed by the National Land Transport Act.

She maintained that the city has introduced conditions of operating licences and bylaws, which the taxi industry has expressed reservations on.

“The task team that was established to address the concerns, has not made headway – resulting in the city implementing the impounding of vehicles based on these conditions,” she said.

“It is an integral part of our legal system that administrative decisions must be based on the principle of legality. We have national laws in place that govern the infringements and penalties dealt with in the contested conditions of operating licences.

“The national laws are in place to ensure that fair rules are applicable to all citizens, irrespective of the city or province they reside in.”

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A city could not “define itself outside the parameters of national laws and implement penalties that are out of sync with these laws”.

The city is not a federal state – governing on its own, without concurrence with provincial and national laws.

Cape Town cannot disregard what Chikunga has seen as the city defining itself “outside the parameters of national laws and implement penalties that are out of sync with these laws”.

The ugly images of a burning and violence-ravaged Cape Town have done much damage to the tourism industry.

The moment calls for pragmatism, the immediate cessation of the strike and an end to violence.