You can’t win a lost battle

YESTERDAY, as Uber drivers converged on their Johannesburg head office to plead for protection from the intimidation of metered taxi drivers, the very people they were complaining about were blockading the main route from the city to OR Tambo airport – in a spectacular own goal.

The very reason why Uber has been so successful is that it has taken a legacy industry and simultaneously modernised and democratised it, putting the power in the hands of consumers. Passengers can choose the type of the car they travel in, the price they pay, the time it takes.

They’re guaranteed a price upfront, which they can defray by the amount of passengers they travel with. They’re given a proper receipt which is tax deductible. They’re guaranteed that none of the cars will be older than three years and that the cars will be clean.

It’s a far cry from the metered taxi drivers in almost every respect. They’ve been losing ground ever since Uber was launched here and they’ve faced the galling sight of their moribund livelihood being revolutionised and reinvigorated by this tech upstart.

It’s difficult not to feel sorry for them, deeply sorry, but that in no way gives them the right to threaten Uber drivers with bodily harm or worse or to block roads in their frustration. In fact, they should be prosecuted for that and jailed if necessary.

Equally, calling for the outlawing of Uber is just as stillborn because the genie is out of the bottle. If Uber is forced out, it will merely replicate in another name, precisely in keeping with all the other technological disruptors that have reshaped our landscape from social media onwards.

The answer is not to fight it with blind prejudice but to learn from it to everyone’s benefit – the drivers and passengers. If they don’t they’ll be just like the Luddites 200 years ago – and we all remember how that turned out.