SA taxi drivers head for the big time(Wheels).

SA taxi drivers head for the big time: A programme to replace South Africa's outdated and often dangerous mini-buses with subsidised state- of-the-art vehicles seemed to be the answer to every taxi-owners' dream. But the taxi industry is up in arms. What gives? (Wheels)

The programme to replace thousands of ageing minibus taxis with custom-built, more comfortable and safer vehicles, ran into trouble with the government and its suppliers on the one hand, and united a once bitterly divided industry into a cohesive and vociferous agent of resistance on the other. The problem stemmed from the fact that the taxi industry was not being allowed enough fingers in the taxi-bus procurement and manufacturing pie.

The process started almost two years ago when the government decided to remove the minibus taxi fleet - responsible for thousands of road deaths a year, largely unregulated and many unlicensed with unqualified drivers from the transport system at one fell swoop. Intended legislation will take the 16-seater taxis off the road and replace them with 18-and 35-seaters to be manufactured in South Africa by one of six short-listed bus makers tendering for the business.

The short-listed companies are: DaimlerChrysler South Africa, Iveco, Tata of India, Afinta Motor Corporation, Joint Stock Company of Russia, and Kwoon Chung Mudan Automobile of China.

So what's the problem?

The outsider looking in would wonder what the problem is. Taxi owners are virtually being given state-of-the-art vehicles at unbelievable prices and terms, and are to be paid over the top for their minibus jalopies. And yet all major sector representatives vowed that if their complaints were not addressed they would instruct members not to buy the vehicles.

"Cut through the fog," says industry watcher Jonny Steinberg, "and it all comes down to money.

"A company like DaimlerChrysler will produce a state-of-the-art vehicle, but it will not in a million years give the SA taxi industry an equity stake in its brand name. A company like India-based Tata will not offer the best product, but it will give the taxi industry a big share in its business."

The industry says it wants to be involved in deciding who gets the tender. "It says, quite openly," according to Steinberg, "that 'the empowerment component of the deal' - a euphemism for its own enrichment - is vital."

Reg Mutsi, MD of Sataco, one of the taxi industry's business arms, says operators will have to "live with the results of this process for the rest of our lives. We want to be satisfied that all the ingredients have been captured properly, especially the affordability of the new vehicles, and that economic empowerment involves the taxi industry specifically."

The government is not happy with this attitude and has told the taxi supremos so, pointing out that it is not in the business of enriching private operators. It has an obligation to plan a transport system that will get South Africans to work in the mornings. The taxi industry must mind its own business and accept the outcome of the tender.

A typical taxi-owner riposte to that came from an industry veteran. "In the bad old days we were SA's mangy dogs," he told Steinberg. "Nobody wanted to touch us. Now that yesterday's political activists wear suits and ties, we are suddenly a prize thoroughbred - the largest consumer of vehicles and petrol on the continent, the largest receptacle of cash in the country. The whole world wants a piece of us. So when the government tells us we have no say in equity stakes, they can go to hell."

As Steinberg points out, "some would have it that the industry is insane. Government throws out a lifeline. The industry pokes its head up long enough to say 'no' and then resumes drowning".

Crazy like a fox

But, take a closer look and you'll find the taxi industry is 'crazy like a fox'. There's method in the sector's apparent madness; taxi barons long since discovered that the end of apartheid handed them the opportunity to become a major force in the broader development of capitalism in South Africa.

Collectively the taxi industry handles a huge amount of money; it also has within its grasp the means to turn the screws on the sector's other players, simply because they have the superior numerical means to do it.

The key to the real taxi-inspired wealth is made of plastic. Smart cards will unlock the regulation of routes, control of fares, keep accurate commuter counts and translate all of this into a transparent cash flow. Predators will diminish as cash disappears. Further, once every commuter in SA starts using plastic, R9bn and growing every year will have to be administered. That's the big prize and the taxi industry knows it's just the beginning. Once masses of commuters are 'plasticised', taxi bosses will have a formidable bargaining tool to take to the utilities, retail outlets and trade unions - millions-upon-millions of captive clients. "Their aim is to do what the banking sector has always said is impossible," says Steinberg, "build a financial giant out of the earnings of ordinary black workers."

Is this possible? When the taxi industry first grabbed the opportunity of building a transport system, it was of necessity a 'frontier' operation run by thugs in some eyes and by entrepreneurial geniuses in others. "The truth is that they were both, inseparably," Steinberg believes. "This was bandit capitalism. It was the nature of the times. The trouble is that to make the leap from pirate to corporate capitalism, you have to stop behaving like a pirate."

Has the South African taxi industry arrived at that seminal point in its life? Watch this space.

INGENIOUS WAYS OF GETTING AROUND

Few countries in the third world have managed to come anywhere near finding a mass transport system that meets the needs of their millions of commuters. Some possibilities have moved off the drawing board in traffic choked cities despite scarce public funding brought about by regional economic downturns.

While commuters wait patiently for a public system that would work and is affordable, they have found many ingenious ways of getting around. Malaysian, Thai and Taiwanese city streets resound to the high-pitched howl of mass-produced 50cc motorbikes and scooters; Indian, Pakistani and Chinese travellers rely on the age-old rickshaw, garishly decorated; Philippine jeepnys crowd the streets with ubiquitous push-bike sidecars; Nairobi and Dar es Salaam have minibus taxis seemingly by the million with drivers that alternately hoot and shake fists at each other and laugh raucously at exchanged jokes; folk on the move in Namibia and Botswana still rely on the donkey cart; in Lesotho the surefooted pony is indispensable in the mountainous terrain.

Emerging economy cities face a transport system problem that seems unsolvable. Even though most of the population can't afford cars, the streets are choked with them. When economies improve and more people can buy a vehicle of their own, the situation could cause road infrastructures to collapse. Africa's older cities were not designed to take large volumes of traffic and a total rethink would be called for in redesigning routes for motorised transport.

Until that happens, commuters will stick with the many forms of transport they have devised for getting from A to B.

RELATED ARTICLE: TAXI FACTS

The South African taxi industry is one of the most important and powerful sectors in the SA economy.

It derives is influence and income from the lack of meaningful, efficient and affordable public transport, even in SA's biggest cities.

80,000 taxi operators run a national fleet of nearly 130,000 taxis.

The industry earns upwards of R9bn a year in revenue.

The average taxi on SA's roads is six years past its intended life-span.

The industry carries about 65% of SA's daily commuters.

LOOKING FOR ORDER IN THE CHAOS

I fever a legacy can be lain at the door of apartheid, it is the chaos and mayhem of the South African taxi industry. The story goes back half a century or more ... and it began with buses.

Although the process of making South African cities 'white by night' by moving black workers to dormitory satellites beyond municipal perimeters had started at least 10 years before, institutionalised apartheid in 1948 put the official stamp on it. Bus companies were government subsidised so black commuters could afford to get to their places of work and back each day.

Most never saw their homes in the working week's daylight hours, leaving home before sun up and getting home after sunset. The result was a mushrooming of townships perched on city borders and fleets of ageing, poorly maintained buses to service them.

More pressure piled on the public transport system as thousands upon thousands of people streamed to the townships as the National Parry government's homelands scheme fell apart. Shanty towns proliferated and soon Soweto township was bigger - in the number of people it accommodated - than Johannesburg. It was chaos, and the bus system simply could not cope with it.

Enter the minibus taxi. In an extraordinarily short time the streets were thick with them providing services that scored by going to where the people were living and transporting them across town, and across South Africa. Vehicle manufacturers like Ford, Toyota, Nissan and VW could hardly keep pace with the demand for the 16-seaters. They were unregulated, many driven by unlicensed operators, many were unroadworthy and they used gun power to take over and protect routes. They were roundly hated, but they were indispensable and the start of a massive new industry.