E-hailing sector urged to elect leaders as MEC says 'we're meeting the wrong people'

The e-hailing driver murdered at Soweto's Maponya Mall on Wednesday night had been in Gauteng for only two weeks.

This was disclosed by Gauteng transport MEC Kedibone Diale Tlabela, after meeting law enforcement officers who traced his family.

The 27-year-old was living in a nearby hostel after arriving from KwaZulu-Natal, she said.

The operator he worked for is still being verified by police who are investigating his death.

“We are concerned about people dying because of conflicts in the industry,” Tlabela said, adding her department is trying to mediate with role players.

On community demands that minibus taxi operators move out of the mall premises, she said representatives of the industry met her on Thursday. “They've committed themselves to peace. They say they don't know what happened yesterday [Wednesday], they are not part of it.”

At Maponya Mall a committee meets every month. This includes centre management, counsellors, taxi and e-hailing representatives and a group called Soweto First.

On Thursday, however, Tlabela discovered the e-hailing operators in the area are fragmented.

“There are allegations and counter-allegations on this matter, including that there's internal conflicts in the e-hailing sector.

“We had an almost three-hour meeting. We believed we were meeting leaders of the industry.” However, at a community briefing afterwards, “the people outside and e-hailers there disputed that the leadership we met are their leaders. They were not representing them, so it means we must go back to the drawing board”.

In 2023 e-hailing vehicles were burnt and stoned at Maponya Mall and Protea Glen.

A member of the Soweto United E-hailing Association told TimesLIVE then there were “illegal operators” allegedly undermining minibus taxi operators and genuine e-hailing drivers. These were drivers using apps to calculate the pricing and determine what they could charge clients at the malls. They would approach prospective customers and negotiate cheaper prices with them directly, while avoiding paying the e-hailing companies.

The department tried to put together a committee to resolve the Maponya transport disputes the same year, including centre management, councillors, the taxi industry and local e-hailing drivers.

Mediation at Protea Glen succeeded, with operations proceeding smoothly. “They encode different modes where, as a taxi industry, they have found ways of working together and co-existing with the e-hailers,” the MEC said.

At Maponya Mall, however, disputes are ongoing.

“The complaint we get from the centre manager as well as the taxi industry is a lack of consistency among the e-hailers. There are changes with the representatives from time to time and as a result they are unable to register progress.

“This is demonstrated by what happened today [Thursday]. It means we continue to sit with different sets of e-hailers and then we are unable to action whatever is agreed on.

“At the provincial level, I sit with a different leadership. When we are on the ground it's disputed, we're told 'they are not leading us, we don't know them'. They also say they are the rightful leaders.”

This, Tlabela said, left the transport department in the province and three metros with no choice but to demand the formalisation of leadership among e-hailers.

“We must know which association you belong to and which association you are going to recognise,” she said.

“It can't be that I talk to 2,000 people when the issues are similar, when we can structure ourselves better.

“What we discuss in platforms is with individuals who don't take issues down to the structures and it was evident here today [Thursday] that we've been sitting with wrong people in our meetings. Wrong people are the ones who write to us about issues, to say 'address this, address this', and when we are trying to address it there's others on the ground who feel the pinch and no-one is talking to them.

“Today we were sitting in a meeting with the wrong people and then we saw the commotion that took place outside where the community had to stand up and say, 'listen, you're talking to the wrong people inside'. This is an absolute disaster.

“We need to find ways of formalising the e-hailing drivers, as we have formalised other operators in our province. You know there's Santaco, when there's issues there, you'll go to the leadership to say, 'here's an issue, how do we solve it?' There's also a National Taxi Alliance wing in our province. We know who its leaders are and they are never disputed on the ground.”

TimesLIVE