Faced with the choice as parents, would you rather know your child is safe or hope they don’t come to any harm trying to get past a hostile taxi blockade to get a primary school education?
That’s the impossible choice faced now by parents in and around Khayelitsha, Cape Town, as minibus taxi associations blockade roads, intimidate scholar-bus drivers into making U-turns and threaten to offload pupils found to be sneaking through by car.
An estimated 5,000 pupils were left stranded by a taxi “blockade” on Monday in a stand-off over potentially lucrative scholar transport routes which the provincial government has likened to an act of extortion — the allocation of transport contracts without following tender processes.
The Cape Organisation for the Democratic Taxi Association (Codeta) insisted on Tuesday the blockade was a “cry for help”, a demonstration shouting “listen to us” after discussions, they say, on a potential scholar transport partnership between the education department and industry proved to be fruitless.
Provincial education MEC David Maynier has dug his heels in, describing the blockade as an “attempt to muscle in on transport contracts and to extort money” from the provincial government. Neither side, for now, appears to be backing down.
What must the primary schoolchildren, sitting at home or with a trusted caregiver as parents work to make ends meet (and pay for unexpected additional childcare) be thinking?
But we must draw a line in the sand when it comes to threatening our children’s constitutional right to education — or our freedom of movement from point A to B.
Despite our government’s best efforts to deal with corruption, malfeasance and crime, one could be forgiven for thinking there have historically been instances where the taxi industry — flexing its muscle as a backbone of transportation in the country — is speeding dangerously along a winding road, seemingly at times evading concomitant repercussions.
It’s not the first time the taxi industry has chosen this route to get its way. There are stories aplenty of private vehicles in KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and other parts of the country being stopped and harassed by taxi associations demanding “fines” because the passengers dared not travel by minibus.
E-hailing drivers have had vehicles “impounded” and long-distance passenger bus company coaches stoned, or shot at, in “turf wars” over lucrative transport corridors. We’ve seen taxi strikes, shutdowns and protests over unroadworthy vehicles being impounded.
That said, SA’s taxi industry is an incredible success story, built on the shoulders of entrepreneurs over decades since the days of apartheid. It now arguably transports the majority of commuters to work, school, home and other destinations in the country, while public transport provided by the state, such as passenger rail, has all but crumbled or collapsed.
Taxis and associated industries provide much-needed jobs and contribute billions of rand to the economy.
But we must draw a line in the sand when it comes to threatening our children’s constitutional right to education, or our freedom of movement from point A to B.
If we don’t apply the brakes now, our final destination will be a gangster state.
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