Taxi Wars In South Africa
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.
The multi-billion rand minibus taxi industry carries over 60% of South Africa's commuters. Generally speaking, these commuters are all of the lower economic class. Wealthy individuals drive their own car for safety and convenience. The industry is almost entirely made up of 16-seater commuter Toyota HiAce buses which are sometimes unsafe or not roadworthy. Minibus taxi drivers are well known for their disregard for the road rules and their proclivity for dangerously overloading their vehicles with passengers.
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. These associations also engaged in anti-competitive price fixing.
Read more about Taxi Wars In South Africa: Causes, Death Toll, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words taxi, wars, south and/or africa:
“I have done almost every human activity inside a taxi which does not require main drainage.”
—Alan Brien (b. 1925)
“The soger frae the wars returns,
The sailor frae the main,
But I hae parted frae my Love,
Never to meet again, my dear,
Never to meet again.”
—Robert Burns (17591796)
“Biography is a very definite region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on the west by tedium.”
—Philip Guedalla (18891944)
“Are you there, Africa with the bulging chest and oblong thigh? Sulking Africa, wrought of iron, in the fire, Africa of the millions of royal slaves, deported Africa, drifting continent, are you there? Slowly you vanish, you withdraw into the past, into the tales of castaways, colonial museums, the works of scholars.”
—Jean Genet (19101986)