In South Africa, the army has been deployed to Cape Town, as what’s being described as a “taxi war” continues to escalate.
Dozens of people have been killed over the past few months, with rival taxi associations battling it out for ownership of a hotly contested route.
Authorities have now closed the route, in a bid to restore calm.
But thousands of commuters are bearing the brunt of the closure.
Al Jazeera’s Robyn Smith reports.
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south africa we dont have a good look this past years we have to do something
We’ve got a lot of work to do to restore our image
@Xongani Chauke yep we sure do and i think the only way out is voting
The Gov must professionalize this industry and have these taxi Bosses pay Tax
They don’t even pay tax
uber
might be time to take the bus.. dafuq?
Taxi wars dear God Just when you think South Africa cant get worse it gets worse.
slowly becoming zimbabwe
This had been on for years, not news
Actually tho
Not news at all. There’s a whole telenovela – nine seasons running – based on taxi wars that happen. This is just the latest eruption of these wars. Taxi wars have been a thing since the ’90s.
@Thobani Mqadi Started in the 1980s with deregulation of the old state monopoly in the transport industry and the general move towards a freer market.
Die bugs die!
What kind of country is this 🤦🏿♀️ this place is riddled with chaos
We have 9 provinces
Lootings occurred in 2 provinces
Taxi violence is occurring in 1 province
There’s peace on the other 6 provinces
It’s not as bad as it seems
As we know capital is a coward, it will flee the country
It’s a failed experiment
Give the drivers guns to defend themselves. Arm your people.. All of them
Then this is what we get. The taxi drivers have guns, and are using them.
Or make guns illegal, and kill gunners on sight.
Poor people always pay the price when the rich have all the power.
What does that have to do with people killing each other. How does that help?
Yet south Africa is sending troops to Mozambique ?
😆
They always send troops, to other countries, and they can’t even protect their own people.
@Keith M 😆
Oh Allah protect my beautiful country.
Allah! Bronze age- Judeo Christian imitators… I dont think so.
Allah has given us all free will; *we* choose to steal or not to steal; *we* choose to destroy or not to destroy; *we* choose to murder or not to murder; *we* choose to rape or not to rape.
Allah, don’t change the condition of a ppl, unless they themselves change it.
So dumb.
I was very good in taxi wars in GTA vice city. My company kaufman cabs became no 1 in all of vice city
Yeah the taxi business can be cutthroat
From bad to worse drama queens
A lot of the Uber drivers here have video cameras in their vehicles. Looks like plenty of people need rides. If you have to fight, fight with video cameras…don’t kill each other over this.
How will a camera give you control over a route? Weapons are what you need then.
But all in all, this is a failure of government and policing in SA.
@Ben Ghazi Well, if you have a camera/cameras then it records who and what exactly happened. So it prevents some violence and if violence did happen the person who did it would have consequences. It sounds like right now the route is a free for all so everyone has the right to try to get passengers.
Here even civilians are keeping cameras in their car and I’ve been seeing a lot of both sides of a situation having videos…like the police have their body camera and the person who got pulled over has their car camera footage. There are all price ranges of cameras out there, they don’t have to be expensive. That’s just what I was thinking.
@KindseyesdniK that’s how it would work in a normal country not south Africa. Police probably don’t do so much about most crimes there
@Marko Nikolić That’s true, I try to think what I’d do if I was there and was a driver. I’d probably also try to get a private group of people I could routinely get from another meeting location to avoid the violence instead of randomly showing up every day and fighting for whos randomly there.
@KindseyesdniK cameras don’t stop crime. London has probably the most amount of CCTV but people get stil stabbed on a daily or weekly basis. And since so much crime is happening the police here in the UK are simply overwhelmed. Now imagine if the police in the UK are overwhelmed, what do you think the police in SA are?
Id leave this country.
Colonial South Africa was a safer place for all.
White European settlers still runs the country from behind. So far the situation hasn’t gotten any better than worse. Please return to your own country, situation will return to normal insallah.
South africa is a failed state who pretend it’s an african super power
This isn’t as bad as the 1989 ice cream van war , rest in peace Haagen daz, many hundred of thousands dropped
I remember they used to have monument for this in London – unfortunately it melted over time
bruh
Imagine dying over a taxi 🤔🤔🤔🤔
Taking that place off my holiday list 😨
Wise move.
It’s really not that bad 😂😂😂
Visit Kenya
@ngashjr Yeah Masai Mara is a lot safer than any neighborhood of Cape Town
Whoever filmed this did a really good job I must say
No white man left to blame for their predicament
Still blaming the white man?
This shows South African weak Public transport
What about the train? Buses
Taxi companies have always been under criminal control
The trains get set on fire, so there’s not many of them around, and buses suffer the same fate.
They’ve actually got a lot of new rolling stock in storage, but they don’t want to put the new trains out because until the entire transport industry is secured, what is the point in putting out brand new trains that might get vandalized in protest.
Now where’s all the fuss made about social distancing we the public are being duped
Sad
Let Indians take the taxi ownership of all taxis apart from that the army will take care of the rival gangs.
it will be even worse .
@Julian British gas tandoh then what do you suggest
What is this race-based politics I’m seeing here? Do we need another apartheid there?
@Attila the Fun one of the reason south africa is so backward is the argument of apartheid. Who cares about something that ended 27 years ago. Yes it is a stain on their history, but so were the nazis for germany, for example. Why has Germany become such an amazing country? Simple, they stopped harping on and on about World war 2. Maybe South africans should stop harping on and on about apartheid and look forward rather than backward
@Benjamin Koh Germany hasn’t stopped ‘harping on’ about ww2.
You really think something as culturally damaging as apartheid will go away in 27 years?
Dude if you want to be racist and ask black people to stfu about their oppression just be honest.
South Africa, do better!
A failed country that doesn’t know it yet.
Yup
No one saw China coming.
Nor India high tech, silicon rise.
They most definitely do not see africa of tomorrow.
South Africa is waging a war to return to being just ‘Africa.’
Black south Africans don’t like foreigners period…whether u black or white.
That’s a low IQ statement. Why don’t you educate your self about Africa before you dig yourself in. South Africa is unique in Africa in so many ways.the one you call just Africa is far more civilized than this idiotic behaviour you see here. There are over 50 countries in that continent, why don’t you start there?
@Yasin Ali well stated. This is not common in the rest of Africa
@dezzjays And neither do we have it in Kenya. This is a South African thing
Whats the point though
I got a bullet proof ice cream truck🚚, I’m willing to give a ride lol.
Ye kya hogaya re baba
Abhi taxi 🚕 ke liye bhi war
Their accent is so cool I would say Nigerian, Jamaican and then their English accent is the best
I feel like SA is the America of Africa and Ethiopia is China of Africa and Nigeria is India of Africa
which country would you choose to live in
@stun star Ethiopia
And Eritrea is the north Korea of africa
Ethiopia is failed country .. civil war is everywhere in Ethiopia and its more tribal society than south Africa
@the ajuranese Ethiopia in civil war
And this dear friends, is in the Western Cape province, an area considered to be much safer than the kwaZulu Natal and Gauteng provinces that experienced rampant looting, violence and property destruction. 🥵
Considering that Cape Town has the highest murder rates, how is it “considered safer”??
A riot in KZN and Gauteng, that lasted for a few days, started and ended two weeks ago.
Taxi wars and gang violence on the Cape flats however have been going on for decades.
@gnose Ok, so let’s split hairs then on where the worst snake pit is: for 2020, SAPS listed KZN, Gauteng and WC as highest to lowest for murder.
@Yeru Cape Town always had the highest murder rate. Nothing new. So it was never considered safer.
2:07 look how they push on each other…
Sad
South Africa is doing sooooo gr8 after apartheid!!!
Just looking at the crowds , I would say the birth rate is more than 20,000 per day born. I don’t know how to google it.
Google the Total Fertility rate (TFR) of the given country.
Population replacement rate is considered 2.1 children per woman.
South Africa is at 2.3.
For reference the country of Niger is at 6.7.
@gnose isn’t niger a country that’s always starving ?
@Tyler Quinn Yep.
@gnose I see. Seems like somebody needs needs birth control or at the very least to get a job to soak up extra time.
There are NO CRIME whatsoever that makes sense, but if you compared this to American violence, this makes sense.
Failure of a government living on bribes and corruption, how can they keep the peace. Also investigate shootings on the Cape Fkats, it’s a war zone and police are the eunuchs.
This is what the dirty emperialists want, fight each other or probably kill each and they come back to you in the name aid and support..the results,you may ask, they’ll steal every resources available and take off
This is Cape Town taxi fight not SA. Its happening in Cape Town, Uber drivers are also being targeted by those gangs. Cape Town and gangsters is same.
So is it taxi drivers killing each other or gangs targeting taxi drivers?
@Eviction Option those taxi drivers and owners operate as gangster
Only Sharia Law can save South Africa.
😂
They need some freedom and democracy. Lol
Omfg, they fighting over taxi routes now….
Taxi war …. seriously? 🤣🤦♂️
elon musk is disappointed. restore meritocracy no child policy for those below poverty and one child policy for those below median income. cure hiv and annex lesotho.
Annex Lesotho? Mind explaining the logic behind that?
FREE HONOURABLE PRESIDENT ZUMA IMMEDIATELY!!! VIVA ZANDILE GUMEDE VIVA!! VIVA BATHABILE DLAMINI VIVA!! VIVA BUSISIWE MKHEBANE VIVA!! VIVA NGIZWE MCHUNU VIVA!! VIVA CARL HIEHAUS!! VIVA ACE MAGASHULE VIVA!! WE ARE ZUMA AND ZUMA IS US!!! RAMAPHOSA AND HIS MASTERS MUST FALL!!! AS FAR US WE THE UNITED KINGDOM OF NGUNI PEOPLE ARE CONCERNED HONOURABLE PRESIDENT ZUMA IS STILL OUR REIGNING PRESIDENT PERIOD! NOT RAMAPHOSA!! RAMAPHOSA WAS SELECTED NOT ELECTED!!!
Zimbabwe 2.0
Sometimes us South Africans are hooligans… There is no ownership of any route 🙄
South Africa really wants to become like the rest of Africa
In some parts, it already is.
Tribalism at its finest
More like mob mentality
This is something out of GTA vice city.
South Africa and Northern Nigerian is competing in primitivism. So sad
Southern and Eastern Nigeria are competing with Northern Nigeria in primitivism.
There are separatist groups, armed militia and communal clashes across the whole country.
Southbabwe😂😂
Cata nd codeta
ANC is useless!!!
Má na hlavě hadovku, BEZVA
Third world mentality. Cant they quee up before get into bus.
Expected nothing less
What’s wrong with the South Africa?
If the same government didn’t destroy Prasa we would not be having this issue for there was no Paarl route when the trains were still operating normally
You are correct, well said.
IF SOMEONE COMES ON YOUR PROPERTY TO KILL, ROB AND DESTROY…MUST YOU SMILE???? WHAT ABOUT ALL THE LOOTERS WHO KILLED OTHERS WHILE STEALING AND DESTROYIN
Looks more like an extortion gang aiming for non paying ‘security fees’…
Taxi War ! I didn’t know it was possible !
South Africa is getting worse day by day to the failed state
Make it illegal to unionize taxis
I am fed up of this horrible thing in the country what a he’ll is going on in this country.
Did this happen in apartheid South Africa?
During Apartheid, I know which place is peaceful. Now, all places are not.
SUUTH AFRICA IS FALLING WHILE NIGERIA AND KENYA ARE RISING…
lool Armed separatist groups across Nigeria, random kidnapping of thousands, poverty, instability corruption, terrorism in Nigeria and Kenya.
Rather stick to reality. lol
No don’t let them pay tax they get rid of these taxis permanently
Civil war is so eminent in this country. So much tension.
Between taxis?😂😭
@Sosa Q lol. Just do research, you’ll see what I mean.