Durban - Mfundo Gcaba, the man that police allege is behind the attempt to muscle in on taxi routes between Durban and the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast not only gave the order for security guards of the rival taxi association to be shot, but was also seen pulling the trigger himself.
This emerged during the bail hearing on Wednesday of the 11 men accused of orchestrating the Brook Street taxi rank shooting that left three people dead on September 16.
According to the affidavit of the investigating officer Major Mandla Dlamini, that was read into the record by prosecutor Khumbu Shazi, Gcaba and his co-accused arrived at the Brook Street Taxi rank in the early hours of September 16 and started taking over the loading bays belonging to the Zamokuhle Long Distance Taxi Association.
Dlamini said that when Zamokuhle’s guards demanded that Gcaba and his associates remove their vehicles, an argument followed before Gcaba and his co-accused opened fire.
“Applicant No 11 had allegedly given instructions to his associates at the scene that the security guards at the taxi rank should be shot if they tried to remove the Sonke taxis from the rank. Witnesses have state that accused No 11 was seen firing shots at the scene.”
Dlamini explained that since June 11 the Sonke Long Distance Taxi Association had been trying to muscle in on routes operated by the Zamokuhle association and started operating the Durban to Port Shepstone route illegally after Zamokuhle had turned down an approach to share the route.
He said that even though Gcaba was not registered as a member of the Sonke association he attended several meetings representing Sonke, demanding that Sonke be allowed to operate on several routes on the KwaZulu-Natal south coast.
He said that the invasion of routes was “a subject of much consternation” in the Department of Transport that they called a meeting with Gcaba personally.
“Applicant No 11 stated that the intervention of the government was what was going to kill people.”
According to Dlamini, Gcaba insisted that taxi associations that were not from eThekwini (Durban) would not be allowed to operate routes on their own without Sonke.
“Applicant No 11 said the department should instead be taking to taxi association to give in to Sonke and accept their invasion was inevitable. He was openly defiant.”
In July, Zamokuhle obtained a High Court interdict preventing Sonke from operating from Brook Street taxi rank and at the end of July the provincial transport department obtained an interdict preventing Sonke from operating from several taxi ranks, including Brook Street, to the KwaZulu-Natal south coast.
ANA