Ndithini Leon Tyhido, Cape Metro Development Council convenor
The Cape Metro Development Council (CDMC) representing the more than 25 development forums, calls on the warring taxi associations CATA and CODETA to silence their guns for the sake of our lives and the lives of our children.
As a structure we firmly believe that only hired guns (ii nkabi) benefit from the ongoing mayhem and violence. Genuine taxi operators and business people can only benefit from a taxi business run in an environment of peace and stability.
We call on the two associations to co-operate with our local development forums in Khayelitsha, Nyanga, Gugulethu, Langa and Phillippi. Meetings were scheduled to have taken place yesterday, Wednesday July 21.
These meetings are a genuine community endeavour in advancing the call for a end to all hostilities by the two associations.
We would also like to call on all employers and employer representative organisations to talk to their members to stop their predatory harassment of workers to come work even if they are unable to due to the ongoing taxi violence.
And as community development structures we must condemn the targeting of innocent passengers who travel bus, private cars and any other mode of transportation.
These two taxi associations must be reminded that they are only a businesses in so far as communities support them by making them the mode of public transport of choice.
As the CMDC we give these two taxi associations till Friday July 23, at 2,pm to denounce all acts of violence and commit themselves to a mutually beneficial, meaningful and genuine negotiated settlement of whatever dispute they may have or face a 90-day full on taxi boycott.
The CMDC calls on the minister of transport, Fikile Mbalula and the City of Cape Town to make available the AutoPax and MyCiTi bus services to transport our community members during the this time.
The CMDC further calls on the Commander in Chief of the South African armed forces, His Excellency President Cyril Matamela Ramaphosa to order the Minister of Defence Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula to have each bus escorted by armed security personnel.