The unregulated minibus taxi industry, which transports 16.5-million passengers a day, has been flagged as a potential super spreader of Covid-19.
The country has the fifth-highest infection rate in the world, with more than 430,000 reported cases, and more than 6,600 deaths.
It is therefore puzzling that the government — which implemented one of the strictest lockdowns in the world to slow the spread of the virus — has bowed to pressure from taxi bosses to allow operators to have full passenger loads, disregarding its own regulations on social distancing. Interprovincial operators are permitted to carry 70% of their licensed capacity.
Transport minister Fikile Mbalula said the 100% loading decision was made on recommendations from health experts. He did not name the experts the government consulted.
The minister has been under pressure from the unregulated taxi industry to increase the R1.14bn Covid-19 relief fund for the sector, drop the stringent conditions attached to it aimed at formalising the sector, and to allow operators to revert to full loading capacity and resume interprovincial operations.
So Mbalula’s support of the controversial decision on 100% loading capacity is curious and begs the question: who is in charge exactly?
“It makes absolutely no sense,” said health expert Francois Venter, a member of the ministerial advisory committee on Covid-19. “I can’t think of a more efficient way to spread the virus,” said Venter, divisional director of Ezintsha, a subdivision of the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute.
“I don’t know who is making government’s final so-called science-based decisions. No-one I know is behind the taxi or school decisions.”
The government’s approach to Covid-19 restrictions drew more fire last week after President Cyril Ramaphosa abruptly announced that public schools would be closed for teaching, going against the government's own previous statements that children were better off returning. It raised concern that the state was ignoring scientific advice when this suited powerful interests, in this case the SA Democratic Teachers Union, which opposed the reopening of schools.
Venter’s colleague in the ministerial advisory committee, Shabir Madhi, said: “It's a poor decision [as it] will assist the spread of the virus.”
Mbalula has argued that the taxi industry “will perish if we continue with 70% (loading capacity)”.
Trade union federations have described the decision as reckless and making a mockery of social-distancing rules, saying the “millions of workers” who commute to work in taxis could become infected.
Federation of Unions of SA (Fedusa) general secretary Riefdah Ajam said the 100% loading capacity decision is “simply outrageous and ... reckless, in the face of the continued narrative sustained by government, to manage the spread of the pandemic which forced South Africans into the hard lockdown”.
Fedusa noted the government’s “deafening silence” about strategies for allowing alternative modes of public transport such as buses and trains, where social distancing is “definitely more practical and far more affordable for workers in the light of economic hardships they have to contend with on a daily basis”.
“Accommodating one economic sector at the expense of managing the health-care response of our nation, and its every ability to set the economy on a full path to recovery, simply casts every shadow of doubt on this ill-fated decision.”
Cosatu, an ANC alliance partner, criticised the state for “capitulating” to the taxi industry at a time when more workers were being infected by Covid-19. The federation has threatened to strike over the decision.
National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu) president Pat Mphela lashed out at the government’s inconsistencies on implementation of Covid-19 regulations, asking whether ministers in the national coronavirus command council were “pressured into abandoning social distancing by powerful business interests in the taxi industry”.
Not so, says Theo Malele, national spokesperson of the National Taxi Alliance, SA’s second-biggest taxi organisation.
“We took our cue from government, we never exerted any pressure whatsoever. We never made any threats,” said Malele, emphasising that the industry was “scraping the bottom of the pot” to survive during the hard lockdown.
“Yet, we had to ensure that drivers get paid, that we sustain ourselves and our families, and that we service our financial obligations with our creditors. All of that is a lot of money that has to come from somewhere.”
SA Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said the 100% loading capacity decision is another example of a government that is “pandering to the whims of the moneyed class and is prepared to see thousands of the people who put it into power die”.
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