By Philda Essop
Snipers using rifles are operating in the latest round of taxi violence that has erupted in the Cape Town area, says Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool.
A special national task team has been appointed to help provincial police deal with the situation over the next two weeks.
Western Cape Police Commissioner Mzwandile Petros has also recalled all police on leave and from special deployments.
| 'Requires a new kind of policing' |
Three people were shot dead in attacks in Brackenfell, Delft and Nyanga on Tuesday. Four people were seriously wounded.
The flare-up of taxi violence follows similar bloody conflict in the industry last year which led to the appointment of a commission of inquiry.
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Rasool believes the police are making good progress.
"Intelligence and forensic work has alerted the authorities to the fact that in the last round of violence the use of rifles may indicate that particular deliberate acts are being fomented through the use of particular hired gunmen," Rasool told a news conference yesterday.
Later, in the legislature, Rasool said: "This new phenomenon of hired assassins and snipers requires a new kind of policing. We no longer deal with mass police at taxi ranks. The investigations are intelligence driven."
But despite the fresh outbreak of taxi violence, Rasool remains convinced that the government is on the right track in dealing with the instability.
"We keep on averting a full-scale war within the taxi industry on the scale that we saw last year," he said.
"We think that, at times, there are confluences of factors, such as when the taxi recapitalisation process begins to take effect and SARS begins to get its pound of tax flesh from the industry, and when lucrative routes begin to open up, such as the case with Delft."
He said that following the Ntsebeza Commission of Inquiry report there had been ongoing arrests, and systemic changes to the industry had been introduced.
A member of the Delft/Bellville Taxi Association, who did not want to be named, said all its members were very frustrated with the situation.
The secretary of the association, "MJ" Prinsloo, died in hospital on Tuesday afternoon after he was shot in Delft earlier in the day.
"We are protecting ourselves. A plan of action will be decided when our secretary is laid to rest," said the member.
"This is getting out of hand. The authorities are not doing anything. They have a lot of names, but are not doing anything."
- This article was originally published on page 1 of Cape Argus on May 18, 2006
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