PAYCO
31 March 2010
The Pan Africanist Youth Congres (PAYCO) of Azania welcomes a ruling by the South Gauteng High Court to stop Gauteng Department of Transport and City off Johannesburg’s unjustified draconian decision to close operations of Witwatersrand African Taxi Owners Association (WATA) in terms of a Provincial Government Gazette regulation which was to be with effect from today, 30th March 2010.
We have vowed to support WATA in a joint meeting held on Sunday 28th March 2010 and intensify the war against BRT. We regard this judgement as the victory for the denfenceless African taxi owners who are victims of intimidation by the government to force the implementation of BRT without consulting with the industry. The taxi industry, the only African owned public trasport sector, has been thriving for decades without support from the Apartheid government, and the ANC government today, while other transport sectors including buses, continue to receive massive subsidies.
The BRT (Buses Raping Taxis) will bring nothing other than economic disempowerment of hard working African taxi operators. The taxi industry is the only business that is operated 100% by Africans people. We will not allow the ANC to destroy the livelihoods of hard working taxi operators and hand the industry to lazy tenderpreneurs.
BRT is a contradiction of what the ANC government programme of Vuka Uzenzele promotes. The taxi industry has managed to offer more unemployed jpeople jobs in the informal sector more than the ANC government can ever deliver. We call on the public and, in particular the youth, to boycott BRT and support their kasi (local) owned transport service.
If the government continue to force BRT on us, we together with progressive taxi forums, will make this country streets and corners, ungovernable until government comes to its senses. We will not think twice about disrupting the FIFA World Cup.
Sello Tladi
Spokesperson
083 859 1654
