Managing Violence of Public Transport and Logistics Industry in South Africa

Abstract

The paper seeks to address challenges pertaining taxi and truck violence in the transport and logistics industry in South Africa. The taxi owners rose against government to demand COVID-19 taxi relief funds. The private car drivers were also blocked on the road carrying passengers, it was not considered whether they were carrying family or friends. The trucks violence occurred when immigrant truck drivers employed in South Africa and import goods from other countries to South Africa had free movement while the South African truck drivers are prohibited by foreign countries to get employment and drive freely. Taxi violence and truck violence is a burning issue for the department of transport, logistics and taxi industry in South Africa. Both logistics trucks and taxi industry play a vital role in transporting movement of goods and passengers. The violence started about routes and innocent passengers are caught in the crossfire. The inability by African National Congress led government to regulate taxi industry is a serious problem amongst taxi operations, passengers, and communities. The deregulations of taxi industry have brought many challenges such as violence and conflict in South Africa. This paper adopted a qualitative methodological approach to interrogating taxi violence in the chosen study location, using semi-structured interviews as a research instrument. The respondents were consenting drivers of minibus taxis who were selected using a nonprobability sampling technique. Interviews were conducted with 14 males and one female participant. The violence between truck drivers is rife, where foreign trucks are blocked, and truck drivers are assaulted. This paper conclude that there is a need for the South African government to regulate taxi industry, control of routes and prioritise South Africans as for employment in logistics industry in order to manage violence in transport industry. What emerges from this research is that the success of government's attempts to restructure and regulate the minibus-taxi industry is severely hampered by the nature of the relationships that exists within the industry and between the industry and government. There is a general feeling of hostility, fear, and lack of trust among all the parties, and the fragile nature of these relationships threatens to adversely affect the formalisation, restructuring and regulation processes