A week ago, the City of Cape Town said it had impounded 19 amaphela taxis and two minibus taxis for operating without a valid permit or contravening permits. Hours after the vehicles were impounded, four Golden Arrow buses and one service delivery truck belonging to the city were attacked.
Coordinated mayhem dominates the roads in townships such as Nyanga, Guguletu, Crossroads and Phillipi East on the Cape Flats, where residents depend on unlicensed sedan taxis known as “amaphela”, a Xhosa word for cockroach.
Despite being suspected by authorities and residents of being responsible for numerous violent attacks on “competing” means of public transport, amaphela drivers maintain their innocence, saying they too are “scared” when they hear of the torching of buses, a crime that is not uncommon in the Western Cape or other provinces.
“Honestly, I cannot tell you the number of amaphela, it is a lot. Even the members of Amaphela, it’s a lot. But most of us do not have permits. Although the city granted us permits, it is a challenge getting it,” said Amaphele Taxi Association general secretary Richard Ndlebe.
Nyanga agreed to discuss allegations of violence levelled at the association. The meeting took place at the Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association (Cata) meeting rooms at the Nyanga taxi rank. Cata, of which Amaphela is a branch, has been involved in violent turf wars in the province.
The Amaphela Taxi Association was previously known as the Kiki Murray Taxi Association.
Outside, a strong easterly wind carries rain over the township, forcing residents to use local transport to travel from their homes to the taxi rank, from where a minibus taxi or bus will take them to work in the city.
With limited transport opportunities available, amaphela taxis — the majority of which are Toyota Avanzas — stand ready to fill the gap. For R10 a trip, amaphela ferry passengers to various locations in the township. They seldom cover long distances.
Inside the meeting room, taxi routes are meticulously outlined on pieces of A2-paper covering the walls, a stark contrast to the mayhem motorists experience — and the fear passengers have to endure — when unlicensed taxis openly disobey traffic regulations.
Ndlebe attributes the difficulty of getting permits to many drivers being “new to the business”.
“Members of Amaphela, some of them are new in the business. We do not have workshops where they are trained to run this business,” he says.
He also refers to the difficulty of getting a tax number. “It is a long process because if you get to the tax offices there are people who say, get this signed and get that signed.”
Jandré Bakker, the communication officer for the Western Cape department of transport and public works, said the city tried “on several occasions, to legalise some 200 of these operators”.
“Unfortunately, the process often ended with a number of the operators failing to uplift approved operating licences after being unable to provide valid certificates of road-worthiness.”
Aware of the possibility of being fined if pulled over at a roadblock, the drivers are ordered by their employers to stay at home when they know authorities will be on patrol.
“In order to not have a problem with [traffic authorities], we just order our cars to stop, we just call our drivers,” says Ndlebe.
A week ago, the City of Cape Town said it had impounded 19 amaphela taxis and two minibus taxis for operating without a valid permit or contravening permits.
Hours after the vehicles were impounded, four Golden Arrow buses and one service delivery truck belonging to the city were attacked.
Bronwen Dyke-Beyer, communication officer for Golden Arrow, says the four buses “were completely gutted, nothing could be salvaged”.
Since the start of this year, nine Golden Arrow buses have been set alight.
“A new bus costs approximately R2.7-million. In addition to this we have to contend with daily stoning incidents and opportunistic vandalism,” says Dyke-Beyer.
JP Smith, Cape Town’s mayoral committee member for safety and security, has said the violence that followed the impoundings was “no coincidence”.
“This appears to be the modus operandi every time that our enforcement services move into this area in particular, to do their jobs.”
In March, service delivery vehicles were withdrawn from Nyanga after petrol bombs were thrown at two Golden Arrow buses, a city council truck and two light delivery vehicles that belonged to Eskom and the city.
Ndlebe dismissed allegations that Amaphela was behind the attacks. “We are also scared [of possibly being attacked],” he said. During the recent attacks on buses, an Amaphela vehicle was also targeted, he said, but was only slightly damaged.
“We really do not know who is behind the bus bombings. This is not the way we can handle things if we were having any problem,” he says, adding that the destruction was also harmful to Amaphela.
“We do not compete with Golden Arrow. So there is no need to have a problem with them. Golden Arrow is picking up people here [at the taxi rank] and picking people up at the bus stops. Golden Arrow does not go into local [areas].”
“[People] are taking my car to go to the bus. If people are not taking the bus, it means I lose money. I need someone to be wanting to take the bus, same as when the train was working. Trains, buses, and taxis do not go into the local areas, the people need our services.”
He said Amaphele was working with, not against, the bus and taxi services. “If the government wants us to share, let us share.”
“It also makes us scared [when public transport vehicles are attacked] because who is doing this, what is his purpose, what is his problem? We don’t know.”
Besides unlicensed drivers and unroadworthy vehicles, there are also allegations that amaphela are involved in criminal activities on the crime-ridden Cape Flats.
Last month, an alleged illegal operator ran over an on-duty metro police tactical response unit officer when he failed to stop at a roadblock in Stock Road, Philippi. The suspect was arrested later that day after fleeing from the police.
Protest action in 2019 led to the standstill of amaphela in Gugulethu when residents were angered by the alleged rape of a 13-year-old girl who made use of the taxi service to attend extra classes at the JL Zwane Memorial Church.
In 2013, the Western Cape government and the city started the process of legalising and regulating amaphela. The then MEC for transport and public works, Robin Carlisle, said a combined effort between his office, municipalities and law enforcement agencies “will also work together to effectively plan and regulate Amaphela operations to ensure that they are no longer synonymous with crime in areas where they operate”.
“These vehicles have been known to be often used during robberies and kidnappings in the metro southeast part of Cape Town. Non-compliance and contravention of the agreements for operation will not be tolerated, as is the case with other forms of public transport.”
Vincent Domingo, of the Gugulethu Development Forum (GDF), said that although amaphela are convenient, “people are afraid [to use them] because it is where crimes happen”.
“It could be abuse, gender-based violence, or theft. When you get into an amaphela you need to be alert,” cautions Domingo. “Our females and young girls are the most vulnerable. It is not 100% safe, people are very cautious but there is no other transport.”
He also alleges that there was “collusion” between the police and amaphela “and it makes the people feel unsafe”.
The 2019 alleged rape incident compelled the forum to hold discussions with Amaphela leaders about regulating the services. Together with law enforcement and the traffic department, the forum requested that leaders allocate number-stickers to their vehicles so that they were easily identifiable. This request was partially met, with only some vehicles doing so.
The GDF started discussions with local businesses to have the taxis branded, because “it is easy for them to commit crime”.
“When they are marked you know that taxi A belongs to this person and you can trace the taxi to the owner,” says Domingo.
“Right now, there is very little regulation,” he says, attributing this to a change in leadership since the 2019 discussions. “With the taxi bosses you need to negotiate, negotiate, negotiate”.
Ndlebe admits that regulating the number of amaphela is “difficult” because when the service was launched — long before 2000 — there was no limit to how many cars a member could have.
“The problem is that we did not have a limit of cars where we can say an owner can own one or two cars. We bought a lot of cars, and it is getting more. In the past they made R500 a day, today you only make R300,” because of the oversupply of vehicles, he said.
Ndlebe is not optimistic that a solution will be found soon but says a “strategy” is needed.
“If you are going to say now, let’s have two or three cars [per owner], it will be challenging because some owners are paying off their cars, to tell them to cut their amount of cars in half would put them in debt. Or those who have 10 cars now must downscale to three, they will lose that income,” he says.
According to Domingo, drivers are taking advantage of amaphela not being regulated. He said an amaphela driver will receive some sort of compensation for letting someone else use his car and that person, knowing he and the vehicle cannot be traced, commits a crime.
Ndlebe said the work was a necessity, not a career path. “[The drivers] wanted to go to school and study but because of the lack of opportunities they ended up becoming drivers.”
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