Law enforcement not the only route to taxi compliance

The sad irony of last week’s taxi strike is that the only parties who benefited were those it was intended to punish and confront. The leadership of the Democratic Alliance got to look like paragons of reason and decency, while their comfortable, car-owning supporters enjoyed a full week of low-stress commuting. No tail-gating, no red-light flouting, no cutting in – and correspondingly reduced levels of agitation, indignation, and homicidal ideation.

As for the losers and victims, the list is painfully long. Tens of thousands of working people were forced to walk home, after dark, exposing themselves to multiple forms of unpleasantness and risk. This while business owners faced not just no-shows and early closures, but also failed supply lines as transport vehicles were specifically targeted by strikers. It’s been a long while since major supermarkets have been denuded of basic supplies; to say nothing of their smaller equivalents.

There were, inevitably, cases of looting of shops, stoning of cars, and torching of “enemy” buses, but there were also, tragically, at least five fatalities. Lawyers and moralists can debate whether the organisers can be properly blamed or held liable in each case, but the unarguable fact is that there are five or more families who would not now be grieving were it not for the strike action taken.

Among them the wife and children of a British doctor who was shot dead in Nyanga while on holiday. His death is no more awful or poignant than any of the others, but it’s more consequential given that it got widespread coverage in the British press.

That brings up what’s arguably the worst aspect of the whole misadventure, namely its economic and psychological impact. The future of our beloved, fractured, tortured, ever-fragile country depends to a very meaningful degree on the right kind of investment, and there are few things more inimical to the requisite investor confidence than public displays of bloody minded, faux-revolutionary destructiveness.

Our stock had gone up quite nicely in July – reduced loadshedding, full dams, nice netball, “best-tourist-destination-in-the-world” again, but a week into August, and all the optimism was undone.

The whole wretched business was an unmitigated disaster, even by the union’s lights. That said, what we need to bear in mind is that this was just a single episode in a long running, real-world drama.

The taxi industry is an enormously important one, nationally, complete with 200 000 operating units and as many as 12 million regular users, so what we need to be focusing serious attention on is how to make it work better, for all concerned.

Fulminating about a culture of impunity may be cathartic, but it does precisely nothing in terms of improving the situation on the streets. On the streets where, in fairness, there are too many operators, too few enforceable rules, and not a single old-fashioned bus stop.

If better law enforcement won’t cut it though, what other options are there, if any? Putting in speed governors has always struck me as sensible, but I do have two other suggestions, one of them borrowed.

In Kenya they have a system known as “heckle and chide”. Basically what it entails is passengers being encouraged and empowered to admonish drivers to slow down or stick to the rules. This is to say using social suasion to encourage better driving. That could be worth trying, but a better bet, on the face of it, is to make use of the cruder type of incentive touted by behavioural economists. That being financial.

What has already been tried, with little success, is government subsidies for selected (exemplary) drivers. What I’m suggesting is the reintroduction of taxi advertising, but not on the same basis as before. I get that no sensible corporation would want its brand to be associated visibly with driving delinquency, so the caveat here is that if the favoured taxi is badly driven, the monthly fee is liable to summary revocation.

Drivers are incentivised, in other words, to do their work properly, and other road users appreciate that the branding is thoughtfully pro-social. With the rapid development of car-tracking technology, the necessary monitoring can be done without putting other drivers at risk from taking photos or writing down numbers while driving.

A model like this will doubtless involve hiccoughs, and quarrels. As Thomas Sowell reminds us, “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” On balance, though, this feels like a good-for-everyone deal.

The brand people get great exposure. The taxi people, both drivers and owners, get significantly more money. The driving public gets to be safer and less triggered. And the roads get to be a lot more colourful.

Bears consideration, no?

• Glen Heneck is a lawyer, a businessman, and an occasional OpEd writer. He is the vice-chairperson of the Cape SA Jewish Board of Deputies.