Why can’t we call a spade a spade?

Last week, our Motorsport Editor Andre de Kock wrote about getting lost during the Suzuki Ertiga launch in Johannesburg, making an unplanned detour through Fordsburg on his way from Rosebank to the Orlando Towers.

He ended up smack bang in the middle of a multitude of minibus taxis and sarcastically reported that he felt rather uncomfortable as the taxi drivers liked the seven-seater Ertiga too.

One reader, Oupa Sepanya, was so outraged by Andre’s comments that he wrote us a very stern letter, of which a shortened version appears on the left of this page. Oupa feels that Andre was arrogant in his stance on taxi drivers and goes on to even defend taxi drivers for not being the scum of the earth as generally perceived and many being decent, law abiding citizens.

I read a similar thing in a letter column in a Caxton Community newspaper too years ago, with a reader referring to them as “highly intelligent individuals”. The very next morning when a missile carrying over a dozen petrified passengers darted across three lanes right in front of me to make a U-turn at a red traffic light right at a sign prohibiting him doing so. I thought okay, if that was a smart guy, the rest of us are actually just plain stupid.

In Oupa’s case, he might even be a taxi driver himself, we wouldn’t know, because he didn’t say. Or maybe his father was, his mate or his brother-inlaw.

I personally have never questioned a taxi driver’s commitment to his church or undying love for his children. Neither did Andre when he generalised them as “armed men with no pity in their eyes”.

Andre merely stated the stigma that relates to taxi drivers. They are seemingly lawless, do as they please, place their passengers in great danger and often partake in violence resulting in a lot of them arming themselves in their constant territorial battles.

Pretty much like in the case of a prostitute, the stigma clinging to a taxi driver is anything but honourable. Someone selling his or her body to put food on the table for their families unfortunately doesn’t change people’s perception associated with the profession.

Oupa goes on to claim the majority of taxi drivers are law abiding citizens. When I’m sitting in hectic traffic and taxis start using the emergency lane to jump the line, I simply have never seen one wait his turn in line like the rest of us mere mortals.

I know the long hours they work and the demanding daily targets their bosses set them, but that still doesn’t give them a free pass to lawlessness. Finish