Cartels Battle for Supremacy in South Africa’s Taxi Wars

[spindrifter]

By MICHAEL WINES
Published: September 17, 2006
KHAYELITSHA, South Africa

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In the last two decades, thousands of South African taxi owners, drivers and passengers have been killed and many more have been wounded in one of the strangest guerrilla wars to bedevil any nation. The combatants are rival cartels that control thousands of low-cost minibuses, or “combis,” that haul a large share of South Africa’s urban commuters and much of the nation’s intercity traffic. Combi drivers are mostly poor, and competition is fierce. Many operate illegally, and even legitimate ones may poach others’ routes to grab as many fares as possible.

The cartels have fought for years over control of lucrative routes and the drivers who serve them. In upscale Cape Town and poor suburbs like Khayelitsha, a vast sprawl of small homes and shanties, taxi violence has claimed about 25 lives this year and stirred a growing political outcry.

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South Africa’s apartheid government deregulated the combis in 1987, prompting thousands of poor blacks to leap into the business. But as competition soared, apartheid agents fomented violence among drivers, hoping to sow discord that would slow the drive toward liberation. They succeeded; the early violence killed a number of liberation leaders, sharpened political divisions among blacks and destroyed entire black neighborhoods.

After apartheid ended in 1994, the violence acquired a life of its own. Lacking government regulation, taxi owners banded into groups, and the groups mushroomed into cartels, using gangland tactics to expand their turf.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/world/africa/17africa.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin