The City of Cape Town is struggling to address the reckless behaviour exhibited by many taxi drivers, following a change made to the laws governing public transport services.
According to the city, it is no longer possible to impound taxis for the majority of offences and only fines may be issued in these situations, which is being taken advantage of by bad actors without fear of repercussions.
A long-running feud
Cape Town mayoral committee member for safety and security, JP Smith, recently expressed his frustration with the lack of consequences that taxi drivers currently face under the National Land Transport Act (NLTA).
“The public transport sector is regulated by the National Land Transport Act, but our municipality’s hands have been severely tied after new Operating Permits were issued to operators,” he said in a Facebook post.
The NLTA’s new operating permits remove the possibility of impounding vehicles for the majority of offences that were previously covered.
Instead, the city can only issue fines, which does little to combat problematic behaviour as many taxi drivers simply refuse to pay up and are difficult to track down.
“This [the new operating permits] was welcomed by unlawful and inconsiderate drivers within the public transport sector, as it is impossible for our Traffic Services officials to regulate all of the traffic routes that see these offences on a daily basis. And often drivers rack up hundreds of fines, while remaining untraceable,” said Smith.
The city’s authorities told the People’s Post that, following last year’s violent taxi strike, the South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) lodged an application in court appealing against the city’s by-laws on traffic enforcement.
The hearing was supposed to take place earlier this year but was abandoned by the applicants.
2023 Cape Town taxi strike
Last year’s taxi strike occurred in August and was led by Santaco, which declared a “Stay Away” strike that left thousands of commuters without transport.
The strike was a response to by-laws enforced by Cape Town traffic officials which saw 30 private and 306 public transport vehicles being impounded in a single week.
The strike resulted in several deaths and the destruction of property including Golden Arrow buses, and was resolved eight days later when Cape Town’s mayoral committee and Santaco came to an agreement over the policies governing taxi operations.
The Minister of Transport, Sindisiwe Chikunga, said at the time that taxis in Cape Town were being “unlawfully impounded through the City of Cape Town’s Traffic by-law.”
Smith disputed this accusation, arguing that the city is authorized to implement its own by-laws as part of a constitutional mandate afforded to municipalities, and that its by-laws were not inconsistent with national legislation.
Cape Town traffic police inspecting minibus taxis. Source: Facebook
Under the NLTA’s amended regulations, public transport vehicles can now only be impounded in situations where they are required for further investigations needed for prosecution.
For all other offences, barring those where the individual does not have a valid operating licence for the route they are travelling on, the national legislation only allows for taxi drivers to be fined.
This includes offences related to unlawful driving such as not having a driver’s licence or ignoring the rules of the road.
According to Smith, the changes to operating licences led to an immediate increase in bad driving behaviour on Cape Town’s streets.
Provincial Santaco spokesperson Mandla Hermanus stated the new conditions are aligned with the NLTA, and that minor infractions governed by separate laws under the National Road Traffic Act (NRTA) have been removed.
“This has limited taxi impoundments to what is stipulated in the NLTA, as it should have been,” he said.
In response to the current legislation, Cape Town is installing new hardware in its metro police vehicles to better enforce its roads.
This new technology is able to immediately identify when a car has outstanding fines, warrants of arrest, is unroadworthy, or has an expired license.
Smith commented on the results of the programme thus far, saying that its cameras were picking up several “wanted drivers” every minute.
For now, the city’s priority is its most wanted offenders, but the plan is to eventually roll this hardware out across its traffic fleet to find all delinquent road users avoiding their fines or court summons.
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