Five deaths, millions lost, tourism dented: Was the taxi strike worth it?

Images from footage taken from the Western Cape taxi strike, via Al Jazeera English’s Youtube Cape Town minibus taxi strike: Court blocks drivers from protesting video.

The taxi strike in Cape Town is over – for now. After seven days of stay aways and violence, the city and its people came through on the other side, bruised and traumatised. Which makes me question whether it was worth it?

Was anything really gained?

The taxi owners and drivers lost income and a lot of it. Those in the know assure me that, contrary to popular belief, the margins in the taxi industry are very small which means that seven days without income will surely be felt by all.  

The economy of Cape Town also took a massive hit.

For a week, it felt like we were back in the COVID lockdown era. Roads were empty, smaller shops and restaurants closed and within a day, food started to run low in supermarkets.  In the townships most spaza shop owners, fearful of looting, closed their doors, leaving people stranded without food. 

It also damaged Cape Town’s image as a tourism attraction.

It boggles the mind why the City could not have postponed their actions until the Netball World Cup was finished. Surely, they could have waited three days, until the foreign players and supporters had returned home before their clampdown which resulted in stun grenades being thrown just meters away from the netball venue.

Most tragically, five lives were lost.

One, was a British medical doctor, who ended up in Nyanga because of road closures and was shot in front of his wife and 3-year-old son. The doctor’s horrific death is not more important than the other four murders, but made headlines overseas, which further damaged the image of the mother city (and even South Africa). 

There is also the emotional trauma that the citizens – especially those dependent on taxi’s - have experienced. Someone mentioned on Cape Talk radio how defeated and tired people looked. I think she picked up on a general sense of exhaustion and a “not-this-as-well” feeling experienced by everyone in the city. We have gone through so much: a water crisis, load shedding, the riots of July 2021 and COVID all in the space of a few years.

Our reserves and resilience are running too low for more strains like these. 

Of course, many blame the taxi associations for it all, but it seems to me that this was a case of two elephant bulls fighting while trampling on us, the small people. I say bulls specifically because there can be no doubt that there were huge male egos involved in this dispute. 

Unsurprisingly, they all claimed innocence. 

The City insisted that they only wanted to make commuters safe and apply the law. The taxi association responded that they agreed with following the law, but disagreed with the manner which the City went about it and also accused them of going further than what is allowed by the National Transport Act. Both sides condemned the violence. 

The many acts of violence were indeed horrific and unacceptable, yet sadly familiar. 

Those of us who lived through the violence of 70’s and 80’s remembers how the N2 and surrounding townships became a war zone as it did again last week. Sadly, as was the case during those dark decades, there was also a hardening of attitudes for a while. At the height of the strike the City said that they would not negotiate or talk with the taxi association until there was no longer any violence. This was worrying familiar of the apartheid government’s insistence that they would not negotiate with terrorists or those engaged in violent protests. I have a lot of respect for Geordin Hill-Lewis who has been a fantastic mayor, but I’m aware that neither he nor JP Smith lived through those times.  Hill-Lewis’ comment of not negotiating with a gun against his head (i.e. while violence was ongoing) might have played well with the DA’s middle class voters, but was certainly a low point for me in his otherwise exemplary term as mayor. Equally so, JP Smith’s threat to impound 25 taxis for every bus torched, were lauded by many for his “kragdadigheid”, but only angered the taxi associations and those deeply frustrated with the inequalities and indignities of the poor in Cape Town more. 

Yet, as during apartheid times both sides eventually realised that no amount of hitting back with more violence or hardline rhetoric would resolve the conflict. The only way to peace was through talk and compromising. So, after late night talks last Wednesday a deal was struck between the City and the taxi association Santaco. 

Although they agreed on a number of issues, it basically boiled down to this: The City would facilitate the release of the impounded taxis (as long as they are roadworthy) and the taxi association undertook to give 36-hour notice before going on strike in future.

For that five people died, millions of rands were lost, people suffered emotional and physical hardship and the city’s image as a tourism destination was damaged.

Which makes me ask again: “Was it really worth it?” 

I think not. 

It was a shameful week for Cape Town and in future, I trust that the big elephants will put their egos aside, sit down and talk before causing all this pain and suffering to especially the most vulnerable people in our society, who always bear the brunt of the chaos when things fall apart.