Martha Shilange and her fellow commuters dived flat on the ground when the bullets began flying around their heads in the latest bout of deadly violence between warring taxi firms in Johannesburg.
”It’s no longer safe travelling in these taxis, but what can we do?,” said the domestic worker after dusting herself down and continuing with her journey into town. ”You can only pray that you get to your destination alive.”
Eight people have been shot dead in the last fortnight as part of the feud between taxi owners in the Johannesburg region, including one driver killed at the shoot-out witnessed by Martha at a taxi rank in Diepsloot township.
But even though many commuters are now terrified of being caught up in the crossfire, the lack of public transport means they have little option but to take the cramped minibus taxis if they want to keep their jobs.
The rival taxi groups have been at loggerheads for years as they compete to take control of the lucrative routes from the townships into the city centre, which have never properly been assigned and regulated by the authorities.
In the past, drivers have been targeted in their homes but the violence has increasingly spilled on to the streets in recent months with gunmen apparently intent on scaring passengers away from particular firms.
Transport Minister Jeff Radebe has condemned the shoot-outs as ”barbarism” and announced a R7,7-million programme, which would clearly specify which firms can operate specific routes.
With an estimated 11-million people using service taxis every day, firms that can monopolise the most popular routes effectively have a cash cow on their hands.
Deadly disputes have also taken place in other cities such as Cape Town and Durban, but the most bitter have been concentrated in Johannesburg.
Boy-Boy Mogorosi, a spokesperson for Top Six Taxis, an umbrella body for several taxi associations, said the government intervention was ”too little, too late” and claimed that recommendations by the court to resolve the disputes had not been acted on by the Transport Ministry.
”So much blood has been spilled in our taxi ranks and the government has not been doing anything about it,” said Mogorosi.
Officials in Gauteng’s transport department, which covers both Johannesburg and Pretoria, have promised to implement Radebe’s plan quickly.
”But the routes issue is an old one and more complicated,” said spokesperson Alfred Nhlapo.
”We inherited the previous [apartheid era] government’s radius-based operating permits, which did not specify which routes should be shared.”
But a driver who spoke to Agence France-Presse on condition of anonymity, warned that efforts to divide the routes among different operators were doomed to failure.
”It will never happen. Never,” said the driver, who works for the Faraday Taxi Association.
”Water and paraffin will never mix, even if you try. Our people have been killed, so have theirs. What does that mean? It means what comes next will be a revenge.”
In the meantime, police reinforcements have been drafted in to provide security at the taxi ranks while extra private marshals have also been called in to reassure commuters.
”People are scared that what happened can happen again,” said Calvin Malema, a queue marshal at the rank where Shilange was caught up in the shoot-out.
”The industry is getting more and more dangerous. I just want to work for two more years and then get another job where I can be safe.” — AFP
