Taxi strike a sign of state’s impotence

So a group of taxi drivers can send out notices via social media that they are going to engage in illegal activities to render a town ungovernable a few days before the event, and are allowed by authorities to actually go ahead and do so without any repercussions?

This is what happened when taxi drivers from several Tshwane townships including Atteridgeville, Soshanguve, Mabopane and Mamelodi staged an illegal protest to force the city to cancel all the traffic fines they owe to the municipality.

For a start, the reason for the strike is absolutely unbelievable. The taxi drivers, like all lawabiding citizens, are not entitled to any special treatment that should absolve them from paying traffic fines. There are correct channels for anyone who is given a traffic fine to challenge it in court and seek a reduction or ask for it to be scrapped.

Taxi drivers are the worst culprits in disobeying the rules of the land, as is witnessed on major highways daily during peak hours. They are also constantly embroiled in taxi wars that often see innocent passengers killed in the crossfire. A bane to other lawabiding road users, they are the last ones to demand special privileges from the same authorities they constantly give the middle finger to.

And therein lies the problem. It has to take an emboldened group to challenge authorities like this knowing that nothing will happen to them and no one will make them account for their actions.

To effect their strike, taxi drivers used their vehicles and parked them illegally to block roads and even railway lines, endangering many commuters during their illegal strike. Obviously, the strike was meant to hit the city as production ground to a halt, millions were lost and commuters and all the businesses were part of the collateral damage. Seeing how easy it is to break the law and not get punished, the taxi drivers are now a law unto themselves.

The cops had enough time to plan to curb this illegal strike but, so far, we have not heard of a single taxi driver being arrested or having their vehicle impounded.

Failure to clamp down on illegal marchers sets a bad precedent and is a symptom of the state’s impotence.