Shyaka Kanuma hits the nail exactly on the head but a few more strokes would have completed the picture (“Look no further than taxis”, November 23).
By using taxi passengers’ submission to the whims of the driver as a reflection of Africa’s submission to the whims of tyrants, Kanuma could not have used a better example.
His missing strokes are those that our government rightly deserves for its neglect, not of public transport per se, but of the principles of public transport.
Freedom of movement is a human right. It constitutes a core principle of public transport and in a democracy should be as earnestly protected as any other human right. Provision of public transport, however heavily subsidised, is as much a responsibility of democratic government as provision of health and education. By failing to make significant and worthwhile commitment to improving public transport, our government shows its loathing of confrontation with the taxi industry and its acquiescence to it.
Another core principle of public transport that our government has chosen to ignore is the economic principle.
The obscene investment in the personal transport of our president is a reflection of the lack of identity of our executive with the electorate that has suffered so much to put the executive where it is.
Extensive research into the taxi industry was carried out and published by the M&G some time ago and the one jaw-dropping revelation that springs to mind is the size of the industry: a yearly turnover of R12-billion, if I am not mistaken, and all of it in cash. The figure begs the question: how much of this turnover is contributed to the national fiscus by way of VAT? Could the industry even begin to audit itself to ascertain its fiscal responsibilities? A government that is prepared to overlook the fiscal shortfall from a R12-billion turnover industry, should be prepared to accept the identifiable and auditable subsidy it invests in public transport.
The monster has been allowed to grow to the point that government is no longer able to control it. For those without access to public transport or simply afraid to use it and reluctant to travel by taxi there is the third option of private transport: hence the proliferation of motorised junk seen daily making such a hazard on the N2 into Cape Town.
More power to Kanuma’s pen and to the press that publishes him. Phil Evans, Somerset West