Bronwen Roberts
Thousands of Eastern Cape taxi commuters were terrified this week as they rode from one town to the next. Many sang and prayed to God to save them from the very people whose service they were using as a vicious war between rival taxi groups fighting over routes continued unabated. The slaughter has claimed 28 lives so far this year.
With no solution in sight, the Eastern Cape government has threatened to start up its own troop-protected bus service to ensure that commuting, so vital to this remote, labour-supplying region, would continue.
Much of the violence centred around King William’s Town — the natural axis point for main regional and national routes — but it also broke out at Alice, Stutterheim, Queenstown, Peddie, East London and in Trankskei towns.
One of the claims is that former Ciskeian policemen are deeply involved in the fight — they own fleets of taxis and have a direct interest in securing certain ranks for their own operators, say critics.
A Network of Independent Monitors researcher spoke of local taxi organisations hiring hitmen to rake rival organisations with semi-automatic fire. It was suggested that a gang of these mercenaries had been brought in from the Western Cape and were operating out of the Queenstown area.
A King William’s Town lawyer who has represented taxi owners seemed to support this idea, saying that the bottom line for most owners was money. He wanted the new government to step in and clear the taxi industry of “gangster elements”.
Desperate to end the ongoing violence, the King William’s Town Transitional Local Council appointed a Taxi Management Committee to mediate between feuding
There was a great show of enthusiasm at their first meeting last week, with three of the local taxi groups attaching their signatures to an agreement in which they solemnly pledged to “abide by the rule of the law and at no stage whatsoever … interfere with, harass, assault, molest or threaten any members of any of the parties involved and the public at large”.
They also promised not to take the law into their own hands and to negotiate a lasting solution to the war.
Three days later, a three-month-old baby and two men were dead, a taxi was burnt out and another attacked in front of the Stutterheim Town Hall where two men were seriously injured.
Meanwhile, a SAPS brigadier was reported to have said this week: “The violence will never stop until policemen stop being members of taxi associations.”
He said the names of certain policeman had been handed to the Goldstone Commission two years ago, but police had yet to receive instructions to investigate them.
The Network of Independent Monitors, which has been researching the Eastern Cape taxi wars, says it has ten names of high-ranking policemen who own taxis. The body believes these men are deeply involved in the violence.
The group’s spokesman says these policemen ensure that people are not arrested for the attacks, and that in one case certain taxi associations were given gun licences while licences were withheld from other
Meanwhile, taximen have been taking verbal shots at the region’s Transport MEC, Mandisa Marasha. They accuse her of not taking decisive action and of bias.
On Monday, regional Premier Raymond Mhlaba laid down the government’s line on the wars — he threatened to send in the troops. “I’ll put every force at my disposal in use to contain the crisis,” he said.
And on Tuesday came the suggestion from government spokesman Prince Msutu that Mhlaba was considering starting a government-run troop-protected bus service to protect commuters.
By Wednesday, the Stutterheim Taxi Association was asking for police escorts on the dangerous Stutterheim/King William’s Town road, but Sutterheim Police Station Commander Lieutenant Theo Meyer said he would not offer protection. He was nervous about being accused of police complicity in the war. — Ecna