THE TAXI WARS

• • • The multi-billion rand minibus taxi industry carries over 60% of South Africa's commuters. The industry is almost entirely made up of 16 seater minibuses. Minibus taxi drivers are well known for their disregard for the road rules and for dangerously overloading their vehicles.

• Due to an effectively unregulated market and the fierceness of competition for passengers and lucrative routes, taxi operators band together to form local and national associations. • These associations soon exhibited mafia like tactics, including the hiring of hit men and all-out gang warfare.

• • The term taxi war is usually used to refer to the turf wars fought between taxi associations and individual minibus taxi drivers in South Africa, from the late 1980s onwards. These taxi wars are still raging to the present day.

Listen to an eye-witness account … [Insert]

Newspaper Articles

Cape taxi war gulps more blood

22 March 2005 Cape Town - The Peninsula's ongoing taxi war has claimed the lives of another two taxi owners who were shot dead during a drive-by shooting on Tuesday. Three other people were wounded. The taxi owners, who were shot dead early on Tuesday morning at a taxi rank in Kraaifontein, were both members of the Cata taxi association. Zamuxala Palaza, 42, and Pumelelo Sandaza, 38, were hit by bullets fired from two vehicles. They were among a group of people sitting at the Bloekombos taxi rank. Superintendent Billy Jones of the police said the latest incident could possibly stem from rivalry about taxi routes to the Cape Gate Centre in Brackenfell. According to him, Palaza, who was shot in the head, died at the taxi rank. Sandaza died later in hospital. He was hit in the legs and chest. Another 13 people have been injured in taxi-related violence recently.

Fear of taxi war in Cape Town

28 February 2008 A Langa taxi owner was killed in the new Delft taxi rank on Thursday morning, a day after taxi organization Cata warned of a new turf war if its rival, Codeta, continued to operate in the area. On Thursday morning, onlookers and witnesses, who declined to be named, said taxi drivers at the Delft taxi rank warned them they could be killed if they continued to board taxis at the new rank, which was opened on Wednesday. The taxi owner, whose name has not been released, is said to have been overseeing the smooth running of the new rank when three men opened fire on him and his driver. An eyewitness told the Cape Argus she was on her way to work when she saw two men running. "I looked up and saw one man trying to climb into someone's yard but was shot in the back of the head," she said in disbelief. The body lay in a resident's yard for more than three hours.