Police Minister Bheki Cele has threatened to shut down problematic taxi ranks and routes if taxi-related killings continue in the Western Cape.
From April until June this year, 44 people died as a result of taxi-related violence, compared to 22 the last year over the same period, according to Cele.
He said this excluded a taxi-related shooting at the weekend where a taxi owner, his wife and their 8-year-old daughter were shot. Cele said one person was killed in that incident.
Cele addressed the media after being locked in a more than three-hour meeting with various taxi associations including rival taxi associations Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association (Cata) and Congress of Democratic Taxi Associations (Codeta) and SA National Taxi Council (Santaco) as well as Transport MEC Donald Grant and Community Safety MEC Dan Plato to try to curb the killings.
Cele said that after this weekend’s death he could not fold his arms and not take action but had to call an urgent meeting.
“We are trying hard to work together besides the politics of the matter. Everybody agrees that killings have to come to an end,” said Cele.
He said Grant had mentioned that there had been only three convictions out of more than 100 taxi-related killings.
“We do want to create some special focus on the arrests. There are ways we are preparing.If all else fails, we will have to use very primitive ways of dealing with the industry (and) we will not hesitate to use the Mthatha approach if needs be. By the way the talks are going, it looks we might not reach that level,” said Cele.
Cele shut down the Mthatha taxi rank at the end of March in a bid to end the taxi violence that claimed more than 60 lives in 18 months.
“We shall not hesitate if talks do not yield desirable results. Those results are that people must stop dying; that is the first thing we want to achieve. If we don’t win through talks and all that, we will have to shut down the operations.”
Codeta spokesperson Besuthu Ndungane said he was happy with the commitment made by the government.
He said his association was looking forward to a next meeting in two weeks.
“We have made a commitment with the national minister that this violence should come to an end with immediate effect.”
Santaco deputy chairperson Nazeem Abdurahman said: “It is a very good sign that spheres of government came together. We will give our utmost support to ensure this violence comes to an end.”
“The issue of route violence is the core. The recruitment of members, where region A is taking region B’s members, should stop.
“There should be no more new recruits because the routes are saturated. The hot spots are mainly Delft, Bellville and, I heard, Retreat. We are sitting on a time bomb.”
Deputy Transport Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga said: “Taxi associations raised that operating permits should not be issued to routes that are already
saturated. There is serious abuse on the issuing of chartered permits.”