Gauteng MEC for Roads and Transport Kedibone Diale-Tlabela said the government needs to go back to the drawing board after e-hailing operators claimed not to know the leaders that were in the meeting to discuss the Maponya Mall attack incident.
An e-hailing driver was killed outside the mall in Pimville and his car burnt on Wednesday night. Two other people were injured.
Diale-Tlabela was addressing the community of Pimville in Soweto. She said she had a meeting with leaders from both the taxi industry and e-hailing services after the gruesome attack on Wednesday evening.
Transport MEC intervenes
The MEC said in the meeting the Maponya Mall centre manager has confirmed that there is space for e-hailing services that operate in the area.
“We are still sitting down with the e-hailing services and the taxi industry to make sure that no one dies again. We have said to the police: they need to make sure that whoever has killed anyone is arrested,” said Diale-Tlabela.
However, she was dismissed by other drivers at the scene. They claimed they are unaware of the said leaders that were representing them in the three-hour meeting. The meeting was to discuss the rising tensions between the two parties.
The drivers seek, amongst others, that taxis should not be allowed inside the mall while demanding unrestricted access for e-hailing services.
They highlighted that the call for access into malls is not only limited to Maponya Mall. They have been harassed at most malls and denied access to fetch their clients.
Drivers demand action on perpetrators
The drivers further called for swift action in investigating the incident and arresting those responsible.
Diale-Tlabela said now that the leadership she met is disputed, she needed to go back and try to deal with the matter appropriately.
“The former MMC of Johannesburg in 2023 tried to put together a team committee. It includes the centre management of Maponya Mall. And also councillors, the taxi industry, and the e-hailers in this place.
“The complaint from the centre manager and the taxi industry is that the e-hailing is not consistent. It faces changes, and as a result, they are unable to register progress on the things that they have agreed upon. And this is demonstrated by what just happened,” said Diale-Tlabela.
She said this meant that the government would sit with different sets of e-hailers. And this will make it difficult to action what has been agreed upon.
She said they wanted to find out which association the deceased belonged to. However, they have found that he had just arrived in Gauteng two weeks back. The e-hailer operators she held a meeting with confirmed he was not affiliated with them.
E-hailing leadership fragmented
“We are allowing the law enforcement to investigate the matter. And we are very concerned about people who are dying because of conflicts in the industry,” she said.
“On e-hailing, they are very fragmented. It is very difficult. At provincial level I sit with a different leadership. Every time when we are on the ground, they dispute that they are not leading us, we don’t know them. While they also claim to be the rightful leaders,” Diale-Tlabela added.
She insisted that the department, provincially and locally, should force formalisation of e-hailing services.
She also reported that taxi leaders also claim not to know what happened during the attack.
