Church leaders step gingerly into deadly taxi row
● Church leaders have traded their vestments and crucifixes for bulletproof vests since they entered the unholy fray of a bloody taxi feud.
Three bishops and a sangoma became unlikely bedfellows in a court bid this week to reinstate the services of the Klip River and Sizwe taxi associations in Ladysmith, KwaZulu-Natal.
The two associations — locked in a brutal impasse that has claimed as many as 61 lives since 2014 — were banned from operating by provincial transport MEC Mxolisi Kaunda in December last year.
With no taxis servicing routes out of the town under the seemingly indefinite ban, numbers in the pews had dwindled, prompting the church leaders to head to court to ask the transport department to lift the ban.
But just a day after the high court in Pietermaritzburg ruled on Tuesday that the ban be lifted pending a formal review, the clergymen had to go to ground for fear that they, too, might be killed.
Bishop Andile Hlatshwayo, one of the clerics behind the court case, has a team of bodyguards shadowing his every move.
“There have been so many killings between these two associations and now we have come out. They believe that I am to blame. My name has been mentioned in their circles and I was tipped off that I was in danger,” he told the Sunday Times.
“God will protect me. He gives men wisdom and that helps us understand that we have people like police and security for a reason and we use them.”
In the court application, brought by Klip River Taxi Association chair Bekuyise Masondo and supported by the church leaders, Masondo says his association has been violently edged out by its rivals, who were named as second respondents in the matter but did not oppose the court action.
“Sizwe … initially made use only of its designated routes from Ladysmith to Johannesburg. It attempted and partially succeeded in taking over the route designated to Klip River by unlawful tactics and by trying to outmuscle it,” his founding affidavit reads.
This, he says, prompted the association to obtain an urgent interdict in June 2017 to keep Sizwe at arm’s length and compel transport MEC Kaunda to enforce the provisions of licences and permits, which only Klip River possesses.
“The secretary of Klip River and nine others were all shot and killed, forcing the entire executive to go underground, which enabled the second respondent [Sizwe] to assume control of the routes.”
He says the MEC defied the court order and instead of making sure associations operated within the bounds of the law, implemented a blanket ban.
In his affidavit, Masondo alleges that Kaunda and Ladysmith mayor Vincent Madlala have a vested interest in the taxi war, with their family members owning taxis that operate under the Sizwe banner.
Provincial transport spokesman Mluleki Mtungwa said allegations that the MEC has a hand in the feud and that his close family members own taxis aligned to Sizwe are unfounded and a “desperate attempt to tarnish the image of the MEC, who has worked tirelessly to bring peace and stability in the taxi industry in uMnambithi”.
“It is a matter of public record that the MEC took the drastic decision to suspend operations in the area following a violent conflict which has claimed the lives of over 60 people since 2014,” he said.
Madlala, the mayor, told the Sunday Times that neither he nor his family were involved in the taxi industry.
Sizwe chair Mbongiseni Mpungose said that violence in the taxi industry in Ladysmith had been long-standing and underscored by faction-fighting between families, which spilt onto the taxi ranks.
“We are not behind the violence and we have not ever used unlawful tactics,” he said.