Q: Yesterday I had to take an alternate route home as one of the roads that I use was closed because some Taxi Boss and his girlfriend were taken out in a drive by shooting. It is not the first time that this has happened.
A: Yes have you never heard of taxi violence? In the old days we even had a special team of SAP that specialised in it "Taxi violence Task team". They fight about the different routes and the other taxi's taking their routes and "sweeping" their customers. They call these illegal taxis "sweeper taxis". The different taxis belong to different associations the fighting is usually between black vs black or coloured vs coloured and sometimes black vs coloured. They have a whole system, eg. at the taxi rank you have to park at the back of the queue and are not allowed to squeeze in. I used to prosecute some of these taxi violence cases, an absolute nightmare....because usually the conductor (money collector) or "guardtjie" as they call them on the coloured taxis and the driver were lying something terrible. The taxi owners were also usually involved in drug dealing, car stealing etc. That is why even today a Toyota is such a sought after car to be stolen, they use the parts on the Hi ace taxi's or kwela kwela's (not too sure how you spell that)