The Soul City Institute for Social Justice announced it’s #SafeTaxisNow charter on 23 August after numerous discussions on how to ensure taxis are safer for women.
The discussions surrounding the charter began in June following several incidents of women being attacked on taxis. The charter involved various partners including Amandla.Mobi, the Soweto Women’s Forum, ActionAid, 1 in 9 campaign, National Taxi Alliance, Sonke Gender Justice, Gauteng Department of Community Safety and Santaco.
The charter calls on the government, the taxi industry and various stakeholders to ensure that taxis are safe, for women in particular.
The advocacy manager of Soul City, Matokgo Makutoane said that safe taxis should be easily identifiable and drivers must be cleared by the police, as well being trained and certified as safe. “All drivers will be registered on a database and carry ID cards displaying their safe taxi accreditation.”
Makutoane added that the charter would ensure that taxis remain drug- and alcohol-free zones. She said the charter would call for taxi ranks to have CCTV cameras and dash cameras should be installed on taxis. “These feeds will be monitored by an independent centre that will feed to a police station.”
Theo Malele, spokesperson for the National Taxi Alliance said, “As the National Taxi Alliance, we support the charter and we want to ensure that women are safe at all times, the alliance will ensure all the charter recommendations are adopted by the taxi industry at large.”
He added that all taxis which belong to an association should have a sticker on the rear window displaying which association they belong to. He highlighted that those taxi drivers who belong to an association will be held accountable for their behaviour.
Also read: Talking safer taxis
Amandla.mobi assisted in gathering support for the charter and ran a social media campaign encouraging women to join the #SafeTaxisNow campaign, as well as submit ideas which should be included in the charter. The campaign reached over 700 000 South Africans and over 100 ideas were submitted.
Makutoane concluded that they want to ensure that, through their collaboration with civil society and other stakeholders, the charter is adopted by taxi associations and government. The charter will begin to be implemented once it has been agreed upon by taxi associations and government.
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