Transport Minister Barbara Creecy outlined the government’s new strategy for transforming the public transit sector at the 2025 Southern African Transport Conference (SATC) in Pretoria.
This conference was held on Monday, and during it, Creecy outlined six main areas the government will be focusing on.
These include rail, air, and sea, but also notably the taxi industry, which currently accounts for transporting 85% of all South African commuters.
Creecy noted that eliminating the criminal elements in the taxi industry will be essential to reforming and improving the transport sector.
“Accordingly, formalising the industry and rooting out criminality and irregular operations remains a key focus,” said Creecy.
“In this regard, and in line with other economic sectors, existing taxi associations have a fundamental and important role to play in self-regulation and governance.”
To support this self-regulation and ensure the taxi industry can be stabilised and the roads made safer, the government is in talks with the banks and vehicle manufacturers to de-risk loan financing on new vehicles.
Along with this, they are developing a Standard Operating Procedure for issuing operating licences, which would bring uniformity to such procedures for provincial governments.
To this end, the Department of Transport will work with all provincial departments to establish areas of good practice in the issuance of licences.
“It is of crucial importance that the duration of vehicle licences aligns with the loan repayment period for new vehicles,” she said.
These goals, if successful, should also help reduce national road fatality levels.
Creecy stated that the annual 9% decline in accidents and fatalities was holding, and to reduce this further, all sectors must work together consistently.
This includes community outreach and education for those living adjacent to major roads, as 44% of all road deaths in South Africa are from pedestrians.
Previous efforts
While these new goals are still in the planning stages, provincial governments have already taken steps to enforce vehicle regulations.
In Cape Town, between 23 and 30 July 2023, the city implemented amended traffic bylaws targeting vehicles that weren’t roadworthy.
This led to impounding 30 private and 306 public transport vehicles and considerable backlash from the South African National Taxi Council (Santaco).
Santaco felt that the new laws specifically targeted the taxi industry and could potentially drive large parts of the taxi industry out of business.
In response, Cape Town’s Nqavashe said, “What many fail to understand is that the law is simply that – the law, and it applies to all, equally. The criticism that our efforts and energy should be devoted to ‘real criminals’ is all too familiar, and sadly short-sighted.”
“It is criminal too, to intentionally remove a vehicle’s number plate to avoid detection and consequences for turning public roads into race tracks, and endangering others.”
The City of Johannesburg has also started its own campaign to crack down on unroadworthy vehicles, deploying the Joburg Metropolitan Police Department to conduct roadside inspections and impound cars that display severe defects.
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