A new plan has been designed to deal with the problems that have rendered South Africa’s taxi industry uncontrollable. Scotch Tagwireyi reports
As taxi violence and road deaths reach epidemic proportions, the government is preparing sweeping plans to revamp South Africa’s deadliest industry.
The plan includes taking the country’s present fleet of 120 000 minibus taxis off the road and replacing them with bigger, stronger, safer vehicles equipped with smart cards to ensure they stick to registered routes.
Under a recapitalisation plan, jointly developed by the departments of transport, trade and industry, minerals and energy and finance, the government will subsidise owners to help them buy the new 18- to 35-seat taxis.
At the same time the South African Taxi Council (Sataco) is working on a plan to establish its own bank in partnership with trade unions, church and youth organisations to control the industry’s floating capital and help taxi owners with financing which they cannot get from existing institutions.
Tenders to supply vehicles have already been called for, and Lawrence Venkile, project manager of taxi operations in the Department of Transport, says the first of the new taxis will be on the road next year. All of the current fleet will be gone within four years.
Taxi violence is scaling new heights. It caused 291 deaths in 1996, 281 in 1997 and 394 last year. This year’s figure is going to be even higher: there have been 373 violent incidents in the first seven months compared with 333 during the same period last year. In all, more than 1 000 people have been killed in the taxi violence in the past four years.
Even more are dying in taxi accidents. Taxis constitute only 2% to 3% of vehicles on South African roads, but are involved in 17% of accidents. Last year taxis were involved in 70 000 accidents in which 900 passengers and 1 385 drivers were killed.
Reasons for this appalling record range from bad driving to poor funding, the wrong kind of vehicles and poor maintenance.
“The current taxis were never manufactured to carry so many passengers every day, or to make so many trips over so many years,” says a Sataco representative. “That is why they are so battered. They are actually death traps.”
Most have gone through four to five engines. Their average age is 10 years.
Travelling in one of these death traps is a hair-raising experience. From inside the vehicle, passengers can see the road whizz by beneath them. Doors are held together with pieces of rusty wire.
Yet this is an industry that provides transport for five million to 10-million people every day, and has a daily turnover of R15-million.
Insurance companies and financial institutions shun the industry, which they regard as too risky. Financial institutions demand a 60% deposit, which means minibuses are effectively bought for cash, with owners buying the oldest and cheapest vehicles.
This puts pressure on drivers to carry more passengers and drive faster. “It becomes a vicious circle,” the Sataco representative explains, “in which the risks continue to grow, making insurers and bankers distance themselves still further from the industry and making operators fight ever harder for survival.”
He says taxis often travel at 160kph, and about 20 passengers are packed into the 16- seaters.
Financial margins are fine. The weekly return on a 16-seater is about R1 500, from which the driver’s salary, petrol, tyres and other maintenance costs have to come, leaving little profit. Most drivers earn R400 a week. They have no life insurance, pension, medical aid or unemployment insurance.
The heart of the problem, Venkile explains, is that the taxi industry arose spontaneously during the 1980s and the old apartheid regime made no attempt to regulate it. No proper taxi ranks were established to control routes, which led to open warfare over more lucrative routes.
While the new elite police unit, the Scorpions, has been wheeled in to try to quell the taxi violence, particularly in the Eastern Cape where the problem is more concentrated, the recapitalisation programme is designed to deal with the deeper-rooted problems that have rendered the industry uncontrollable.
The new taxis will have diesel engines, which are stronger and longer-lasting than petrol engines. They will be required to have regular roadworthy tests, and the successful bidder for their manufacturing will also be responsible for maintaining the vehicles.
A critical innovation is that the new taxis will be fitted with tracking devices and smart cards, so they can be spotted and penalised if they take unregistered routes. This, the planners believe, will greatly reduce the taxi wars over routes.
The smart cards will also keep track of the daily income of the taxis. Sataco’s idea is that the owners should pool their income to build the new bank, to be called Motu, to keep their floating capital within the industry and help the operators with new purchases.