Our World

Taxi Wars in South Africa

We have all heard of drug cartels, but I was surprised to find information about cartels involving taxi drivers in South Africa. In this country, the transportation is by low cost minibuses known as combis, somewhat like the taxis we know. For twenty years, thousands of South African drivers and passengers of combis have been killed in this strange form of a guerilla war. Rival cartels fight over routes and the drivers that serve them. The apartheid in South Africa deregulated the combis, which made thousands of poor blacks join the occupation in 1987. After the influx of new drivers, competition soared. Years of politics, crime, and racial hatred have muddied the rivalries of the cartels, so there is no simple solution.

Even though South Africa is the most industrialized and developed country in Sub-Saharan Africa, this issues proves that there are still many things that need to be improved. The end of apartheid greatly diminished racial intolerance in South Africa, but the hatred still exists. The government will require stricter laws for new licenses, but that doesn't solve the problem of the current combi drivers. I think that the government should put more regulations in effect to protect the combi drivers that are safe. They could organize paths for groups of drivers in the same cartel to take so that there would be no confusion and violence as a result. Then if people were killed, the government could narrow it down to a small group of people who could have caused it. Any other ideas?

posted by Anonymous @ 10/31/2006 04:38:00 PM