THIS IS TAXING

CRIME fighters in Cape Town have their hands full in the Mother City. 

With gang violence plaguing the city on one side, Mobility MEC Isaac Sileku also announced last Friday that key taxi routes would be shut down for 30 days because of ongoing taxi violence. 

Naturally, that requires manpower to enforce. 

The closures follow six deaths linked to violent clashes last month between rival associations, the Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association (Cata) and the Congress Organisation for the Democratic Taxi Association (Codeta).

Wednesday was day one of the shut down of 10 contentious routes between Mfuleni, Khayelitsha, Nyanga, and Somerset West and while it went down without much drama, the City’s mayco member for Safety and Security JP Smith questioned the fairness of diverting resources to police taxi feuds. 

Of the day’s proceedings, Smith said: “We’ve had six operators not behaving. There’s a seventh one unrelated to this particular route closure for reckless and negligent driving, and then we have a situation where taxis are violating the instructions and going to the ranks where they are not supposed to be, and that compels ongoing action from us.

“But mercifully, no violence this morning, no violent altercations, no further conflict. And I think this is a situation we are monitoring very extensively, just over 260 staff deployed in response to this incident and using aerial surveillance to monitor from the air, as well as the network of CCTV cameras along this route and at the public transport interchanges.”

Smith said Golden Arrow Bus Services (GABS) had stationed a representative at the joint operations centre in Goodwood.

“We are escorting their buses, and they have their own monitoring operation and will alert us as soon as there is any problem,” he said.

“We have a substantial amount of staff available to respond to any attack or threat on any Golden Arrow buses. We are committed to running this for five days, after which we will reassess.”

He then added: “The question is, is it fair to everybody else in Cape Town for us to have to commit 268 staff today to this, when there are so many other issues and so many other problems? 

“We have flare-ups of gang violence elsewhere. Resources committed to this are resources not working on gang violence.”

Meanwhile, Codeta filed an urgent interdict on Wednesday against the closures.