Students step into taxi war after driver’s brutal end

STUDENTS are planning to mobilise against the ongoing warfare between the meter-taxi and app-based taxi services in the name of their 21-year-old colleague and Taxify driver Siyabonga Ngcobo.

Tributes and messages of condolences following Ngcobo’s death in Pretoria late last week are being shared under the hashtag #JusticeForSiyabonga‚ a campaign started by his aunt‚ Nobuhle Mbonambi.

Family members are sharing their heartbreak as they try to come to terms with his murder‚ which came less than two years after they had celebrated his recovery from a serious medical condition.

Ngcobo was a fourth-year student at Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) and had established an events management business. He only recently became a Taxify driver.

His body was found in the boot of a burnt Chevrolet Aveo near Unisa’s Sunnyside campus on Thursday night.

TUT’s Student Representative Council vice-president‚ Sthembiso Kashanda‚ said the student community was mobilising a march to demand justice for Ngcobo, as well as other slain Taxify and Uber drivers.

“It can’t be business as usual. He was one of us and we will fight for him and the many who died in this business,” he said.

“Sometime this week we will embark on a demonstration for awareness of Taxify and Uber driver deaths.

“We will call for a ban on meter-taxi drivers operating until a peace accord has been reached.”

Kashanda said he was engaging with the Department of Transport‚ police and other stakeholders who might help get to the bottom of the problem.

Mbonambi said the family was not coping with Ngcobo’s gruesome death.

“He was just a boy‚ who had nothing to do with the industry’s war. It’s horrible what they did‚ trying to prove a point‚” she said.

Mbonambi said her nephew was collecting a client in Sunnyside when a group of meter-taxi drivers approached him.

“They asked him to step out and get into the boot. They drove off with him and burnt him alive,” she said. – TimesLIVE