Crack team to tackle taxi gang rapes

High-level probe launched after mom’s 4-hour ordeal

IN AN EFFORT to crack down on a spate of alleged rape incidents perpetrated by a gang in a Toyota Quantum, the Gauteng SAPS has established a high-level task team.

The investigating team, according to Gauteng SAPS Brigadier Mathapelo Peters yesterday, would include senior detectives, intelligence and other provincial senior police officers.

Peters said the team would be looking into the alleged inaction by the police, relating to one of the complainants who said she was shunted from one police station to another while trying to report the case.

Peters said there had been several cases of this kind reported in the province, which was what led to the establishment of the task team.

It’s alleged that a gang of men have been driving around in a white Quantum minibus taxi picking up women in and around Soweto, then robbing and raping them.

One of the first cases that was reported was made public by a survivor of the ordeal on Kaya FM, which led to Community Safety MEC Sizakele NkosiMalobane yesterday saying she would call for a meeting with leaders of the taxi industry.

Speaking at a media conference yesterday, Nkosi-Malobane said she would be meeting taxi officials and the SAPS over the cases.

“A number of rape and abuse of women incidents, allegedly by taxi operators, have been reported in recent times, and the meeting will discuss ways to address them,” she said.

Nkosi-Malobane also issued a stern demand to the taxi fraternity, saying those who have information on the gang must come forward.

There have been unconfirmed reports of a spate of rapes, including one that a gang had raped nine women in one day.

A woman who called in on 702 said she had flagged down a Quantum, thinking it was a taxi. She was with her 10-year-old son.

For the next four hours, the woman said she was raped in the back seat of the taxi while her son was forced to watch.

DA spokesperson on community safety in the provincial legislature Kate Lorimer raised her concerns about the inaction of the police, and said the MEC had misdirected her demand as it was not the responsibility of taxi associations alone to solve the issue.

“I will write to the chairperson of the Gauteng community safety committee to summons provincial police commissioner Major-General Deliwe de Lange to come and account before the legislature under oath,” Lorimer said.

“We just cannot accept that people continue to be raped in captive situations like locked taxis, and that the police are not acting.

“The SAPS must protect and serve us,” she added.

Dobsonville, Roodepoort, Leratong, Johannesburg Taxi Association spokesperson Zeblon Simelane yesterday said his organisation would meet other taxi associations to discuss how they could assist the police in arresting the gangsters who were terrorising women.

“We are going to look for this taxi, because as I’m told it doesn’t have a sticker like other taxis that operate on our routes,” he said.

“When we find them, we are not going to be soft, we are going to be very harsh,” Simelane said.