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- A taxi stay-away in Cape Town was halted at the last minute after urgent meetings with local and provincial government.
- But the City's law enforcement agencies were still prepared to encounter trouble on Wednesday morning.
- JP Smith said the targeting of buses would be met with harsh consequences.
Wednesday's planned strike by the South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) in Cape Town was called off at the last minute, but the City's law enforcement agencies weren't letting their guard down.
Within hours of being appointed the Western Cape's new MEC for Mobility, Ricardo Mackenzie faced urgent talks with taxi bosses regarding a planned shutdown.
Santaco called for a mass stay-away on Wednesday, due to the "targeting" of minibus taxi operators.
But, following a meeting with the provincial government and the City of Cape Town on Tuesday afternoon, Santaco announced that progress had been made and that the stay-away would not go ahead.
The taxi organisation called on drivers to operate as normal.
"The commitments made in today's [Tuesday] engagement indicate a show of good faith from all sides," said Mackenzie, who will chair a weekly task team with the leadership of Santaco-Western Cape to address the issue of operating licences and the training of registered drivers.
"Through the task team, we will work together to address the challenges faced by the minibus taxi industry and ensure people can travel safely this week," Mackenzie said.
The City of Cape Town's law enforcement agencies, however, still showed a strong presence on Wednesday morning, patrolling major highways and taxi ranks, despite the strike being called off.
Initially convened to manage heightened load shedding, the City's joint operations centre was abuzz with activity, keeping a close watch on incident reports and live camera footage from across Cape Town.
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"Today [Wednesday], the City had to deploy very significant resources early this morning… and we did so because we were not sure Santaco was going to keep their commitments," JP Smith, the mayoral committee member for safety and security, told News24.
"I must say that they were true to their word. The president of Santaco, Mandla Hermanus, is a person who, when we've engaged with him, has negotiated… in good faith.
"The manner in which he engages helps us reach conclusions," Smith said.
Although the City has agreed to work with Santaco to address two main concerns – the issue of operating permits and the impounding of taxis – Smith said lawless behaviour on the roads and, crucially, the targeting of bus services, like Golden Arrow and MyCiti, will not be tolerated.
Smith said:
"So, about two years ago, we shifted our focus increasingly towards impoundment. We used to do a few hundred [impoundments] a year [and] we are now doing, on average, around 30 to 50 vehicles a day."
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This impoundment programme as well as intensified traffic enforcement operations have angered taxi operators, resulting in destructive attacks on City infrastructure.
"It's become a norm for the taxi industry to reciprocate with violence and start burning MyCiti buses and Golden Arrow buses in the hope of causing us to retreat [and] in the hope that we will, as we used to in the past, say the violence is too much, the disincentive is too much, we will retreat and not do enforcement in those areas," said Smith.
But, instead of retreating, the City has redoubled its efforts to hold operators to account, impounding larger numbers of taxis in response.
Smith listed as an example the impounding of at least 50 taxis for every bus damaged, in reply to violence in Nyanga, with similar approaches in Khayelitsha and, more recently, Hout Bay.
"As we said yesterday [Tuesday] to them, face to face, this is about making sure that when they resort to violence and malicious damage to property, they understand there is a consequence to that. It's not just something you do and get away with."
