How officials have contributed to the rise of taxi violence

Over the last 30 years South Africa’s taxi industry has grown tremendously. At the moment, 15 million South Africans rely on taxis for their daily commutes. Some of these vehicles are minibus taxis that belong to organised associations; others are usually four- or seven-door sedans like Toyota Avanzas, whose drivers and owners tend not to belong to formal groupings.

Violence is very common on the country’s various taxi routes. In the most recent incident, four members of rival taxi associations were gunned down in Hout Bay, a suburb in Cape Town. The crime is reportedly linked to competition over routes between two rival taxi associations.

The kind of violent competition over routes that led to the deaths in Hout Bay has characterised the taxi industry since its deregulation in 1987. The industry remains one of the most profitable entrepreneurial paths that residents in mostly black townships can access – especially given the historical exclusion of black South Africans from decent jobs and the skills to acquire them.

The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the rise of taxi “mother bodies” that attempted to monopolise routes by threatening violence. In response, the government tightened regulations on taxis. The key intervention was to issue licences for specific associations on specific routes. Individual taxi owners had to apply to join an association that enjoyed exclusive rights to a route. In effect, the state limited competition to reduce the likelihood of violence and bad driving.

This strategy has reduced but not eliminated violence. This is because new operators emerge all the time, or ambitious bosses try their luck against rivals. But sometimes the state, too, is to blame – albeit sometimes because of unintended consequences.

As research published in our new book Democracy Disconnected: Participation and Governance in a City of the South shows, the complicated and contradictory nature of local governance can exacerbate as well as contain taxi violence.

Bureaucrats and business models

The implicit business model of taxis is about low profit per fare, but a high volume of fares. The taxi driver first meets daily targets and then earns their own wage. This model not only incentivises drivers to transport large volumes of passengers, it also transfers much of the risk associated with frequent petrol price increases on to the driver first.

This means the taxi industry isn’t just competitive but that this competition most keenly affects drivers whose livelihoods depend on moving large numbers of people quickly.

Then, when competition over the right to operate on routes heats up, the state tries to formalise taxis through licensing. The intention is to reduce conflict (and bad vehicles and bad driving) by improving livelihood security though guaranteeing business on a route.

Unfortunately, this bureaucratic intervention doesn’t always work as intended. For example, in Hout Bay a major route for the area was allocated to an association whose owners were not from Hout Bay. This marginalised another association, whose owners were from the area.

And another intervention by the City of Cape Town – the introduction of a Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) system that includes formal taxi owners affected by the new bus routes as owners in the new BRT Company – only complicated matters further.

Complicating matters through development

The BRT was informed by the revolutionary public transport system developed in Bogota, Colombia. Cape Town’s version was conceived as a key part of an integrated public transport network to improve upon the existing public transport in the build-up to the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

Its introduction has had a profound impact on Hout Bay’s taxi industry. That’s because one of the BRT’s key business features is to buy out taxi owners by incorporating those with licences into vehicle operating companies that would be contracted by the City of Cape Town to run the buses used for the BRT for 12 years.

The idea was to give taxi owners a vested interest in the BRT and so promote cooperation rather than conflict. By and large this approach appears to have worked in Hout Bay: the route from the area to the CBD is reportedly one of the BRT’s top performers.

But not all taxi owners working the Hout Bay-to-Cape Town route were included in the new deal. And a number of taxi drivers summarily lost their jobs as their owners bought into the BRT without informing them. As a consequence, a group of taxi owners from one association continued to operate illegally in Hout Bay, using an informal taxi rank near the police station for their activities.

So, while the BRT plan was intended to ease tensions with most formal taxi owners in Hout Bay – and to lessen the threat of violence and protest – it also seems to have unintentionally exacerbated them. Some taxi owners and drivers feel squeezed out of the market. So they operate informally and without licences.

Governance is crucial

This all shows that a number of conflicts are playing out over transport in Hout Bay. These are rooted in the contradictory logic of contending forms of market, bureaucratic and developmental governance. The drive for business profit sits in tension with bureaucratic attempts to reduce violence and improve road safety. It can also sit in tension with developmental attempts to provide affordable, accessible transport using busses.

Getting this balance between these contending social goods is tough, especially in a context where getting it wrong can cost lives. But if nothing else, it shows how important well-designed, consistent and thoughtful local governance is to the daily commute (and lives) of all South Africans.

Fiona Anciano, Senior Lecturer, Political Studies, University of the Western Cape and Laurence Piper, Professor of Political Studies, University of the Western Cape

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

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