Community Safety

6.       The South African Police Service informed me as follows:

          A Transport Priority Committee has been established under the auspices of the Prov Joints. A Conflict Management Action Plan (CMAP) was developed by the committee to respond to incidents of disputes, conflict and violence in the public transport industry.

          A Taxi task team has been established with role players including City of Cape Town Safety and Security Enforcement agencies, Department of Transport, Provincial Transport conflict resolution, SAPS, NPA and ICC. The Task Team seeks solutions to Intra Taxi conflict; identify early warnings of possible taxi violence and prosecution of arrested perpetrators of taxi violence.

                The Department of Transport and Public Works informed me as follows:

          After consultation with the Department of Transport and Public Works it was indicated that the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) recently established a Joint Task Team on Taxi Related Crimes, with its Terms of Reference endorsed by the SAPS’ ProvJoints at its meeting in March.   The members of the Joint Task Team are drawn from the following authorities:

• SAPS
  • • Crime Intelligence
    • Detectives
    • DPCI (Hawks)
• Transport and Public Works 
• NPA,
• NIA
• SARS
• Dept of Community Safety
• CoCT

          The Joint Task Team will seek to identify and address the root causes of taxi related crimes, and its tasks will include the following: 

1. Collecting information and compiling a single repository of all outstanding cases and investigations involving taxi related crimes;
2. Categorising and prioritising cases including:
   • • • • • • Murders (assassinations)
             • Organised crime  cases for priority investigation
             • Extortion
             • Tax evasion (leaders)
             • Asset forfeiture
             • Fraud and corruption cases for priority investigation
3. Achieving quick wins : Arrests and prosecution of ring leaders
4. Coordinating Investigations into financial management practices of minibus taxi associations, ‘mother-bodies’ and leaders and launching any cases of non-compliance with tax laws;  (SARS, Taxi Registrar, NIA, DPCI, AFU)

          Deliberating and deciding on issues relating to public transport legislation, safety, security and enforcement to be referred or escalated to municipal, provincial or national departments, authorities or agencies for review or strengthening.