A culture of reckless driving is creating havoc on the roads, but what is the government task team doing to put the taxi industry on the road to recovery? Dawn Blalock reports
MPHO MAKHAYA, one month shy of her 17th birthday, is recovering in Leratong Hospital from neck and leg injuries she sustained when the minibus she was taking to school rammed into a passenger car and then overturned on a corner.
Makhaya’s mother says she’s lucky. Her child is still alive. She says another family lost a daughter – their second child to die in a minibus accident.
There are an estimated 150 000 minibus taxis on the roads in South Africa today. They make up 2% to 3% of all vehicles, but are involved in 17% of all collisions, according to the Automobile Association (AA).
South Africa kills about 10 000 people on its roads each year, possibly the most road deaths in the industrialised world.
The government is working on bringing the taxi industry under control, but questions remain as to when a regulated taxi business will translate into fewer fatalities on the roads.
The roots of the problem are financial. Profit margins are slim so taxi drivers overload minibuses for additional fares, race in and out of town to pack in that extra trip, cannot afford to take a day off for minibus repairs or driver training, and rely on money-saving shortcuts such as re- grooved tyres – bald tyres with the tread cut into them.
“They’re practically driving on the canvas!” says Moira Winslow, a member of the Gauteng Taxi Initiative’s road safety committee.
On a typical day, a minibus carries 15 passengers into central Johannesburg. Those 15 passengers are chiefly breadwinners for their families. If that taxi driver crashes, “it could influence 100 people or more in terms of people who have to be fed on their salaries”, says Bjrn van Oordt of the AA. Road accidents “are killing people and killing breadwinners and it’s costing the country R10-billion a year”.
The culture of reckless driving “rubs off” on all drivers and creates a culture of lawlessness on the roads. “Everybody’s always knocking the taxi industry,” says Van Oordt, “but I’ve seen motor vehicle drivers doing the same types of things.”
The industry has hit its low point, acknowledges Dipak Patel, chair of a government-appointed taxi task team. It is suffering from two decades of neglect, piecemeal legislation built on the back of the metered taxi industry and a business environment riddled with mafia-style violence. And the fatalities pile up.
The taxi industry is on the road to recovery, but it will not happen overnight, says Patel.
“I can unapologetically say the process to resolve the taxi problem is not going to be a two-week process, or even a six-month process,” he says. “It will take two to three years to resolve the issue in a sustainable way.”
The task team’s aim is to break what has become a vicious circle: taxi drivers flaunt the laws; punishment is meted out in the form of a fine; the fines are ignored and begin to overburden the system; a bureaucratic logjam is created.
Add to this an over-saturated market, where too many drivers who compete for too few customers attempt to redistribute the supply and demand with their own form of violent capitalism
The solution has to be a creative one, says Patel, with legislation specific to an industry that has long filled a vacuum in public service while being ignored by the government (except for when the powers- that-be were actively trying to stamp out the industry).
Also on the agenda is economic assistance to ease the financial margins in an industry that has long been, and was at one time, one of the few avenues for black entrepreneurship.
Patel has just emerged from two days of intense meetings in Kimberley concerning a taxi constitution. It includes provisions for labour practices, roadworthiness and a code of conduct.
But critics say the government is treating the taxi industry with kid gloves because it doesn’t want to antagonise the loyalties of a valuable African National Council voting block.
“The Department of Transport is not going to threaten the taxi owners because we’ve got an election coming up and they are worried about disaffecting the entire industry,” says Winslow, who is also the head of Drive Alive, a road-safety advocacy group she founded after her family was killed in a road crash.
Courting the industry may backfire on the government politically, Winslow warns. “They are doing a disservice to their voters. I think the voters appreciate strong-armed tactics to prevent road crashes.”
Patel scoffs at any implication that the government is dragging its feet in its attempt to reign in the taxis.
“I did not spend the last two years of my life locked in very detailed negotiations with the leaders of the taxi industry because I wanted to buy their votes,” says Patel, who is also a member of the Department of Transport.
What’s needed, says Patel, is a total mindset change to a culture of road safety which actually obeys speed limits and doesn’t pass over blind crests. “It’s not just the taxi industry’s problem, it’s the country’s problem.”