ANC members of the provincial legislature will meet representatives of the SA National Taxi Council (Santaco) on Friday to try to resolve issues that led to a taxi strike in the Western Cape on Monday.
The ANC’s Cameron Dugmore and other MPLs of the party, councillors and Police Minister Bheki Cele's special adviser, Lennit Max, met members of the minibus taxi industry task team (MTITT) on Tuesday, where they were informed of their grievances. This after it was business as usual for the taxi industry after a one-day strike that led to the Western Cape ANC intervening to broker peace between the warring parties.
After the meeting on Friday morning, a meeting will be held between the provincial and national Santaco delegations and the MTITT. According to Dugmore, they are playing a facilitative role.
Taxi bosses in the Western Cape say they have had enough of the lack of leadership shown by Santaco, an umbrella body for taxi associations that liaises between the government and taxi associations regarding operational issues, funding and programmes relevant to the taxi industry. The main taxi groups – Cata (Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association) and Codeta (Congress of Democratic Taxi Associations) – had set up the MTITT to address the challenges faced.
The one-day “withdrawal of services”, which Dugmore called it, was due to a conference that was supposed to have been held to resolve a leadership dispute over the provincial arm of Santaco. Besuthu Ndungane, of the MTITT, claimed Santaco had refused to honour the undertaking to convene the conference.
On June 6, the Western Cape High Court ordered that Santaco convene a conference to resolve the Western Cape taxi industry's issues over leadership and differences over clauses in the Santaco provincial and national constitution.
The associations in the province feel their views are not being reflected at a national level, causing a "leadership vacuum", decreased interaction between provincial and regional structures and taxi associations and a breakdown in trust. They also want clarity on the formula used to calculate how many individuals can be elected to provincial structures and how they qualify to be elected.