Taxi Industry Condemned for the Cold Killing of Young Uber Driver
The community of Klipspruit and the whole country has been reeling after the tragic and inhumane murder of 27-year-old Uber driver, Mthokozisi Siyanda Mvelase, at the hands of taxi drivers at Maponya Mall in Soweto. Since news broke out that Mvelase was burned to death along with his car while another driver escaped with his life but not his torched car, citizens have taken matters into their own hands, voicing their discontent not only on social media but by taking things outside and calling for a shutdown of the mall and for the taxi industry to be brought to the book.
Tensions had already been brewing between the people and taxi drivers, with the former venting their frustration concerning the taxi industry wanting full monopoly over the customer base in the transportation sect by any means necessary. The brutal shooting and burning of Mvelase, while inside his car, was the proverbial last straw and a manifestation of a greater ill left unchecked. According to his aunt, Mvelase had only been working as an Uber driver for several days after relocating from KwaZulu-Natal to Gauteng in order to a make living with a car he bought just weeks before his life was taken on the job.
An image of Mvelase’s car ablaze | SUPPLIED
In response, the people expressed their rage by blockading roads with stones, broken bottles and debris, while others populated the streets of Maponya Mall, effectively choking the routes of the taxis and stopping them from operating in the vicinity.
South Africans universally condemned the killing and the taxi industry as a whole for their flagrant disregard for human life and treating communities as nothing but a means to an end.
@AppleMokoena said: “Taxi drivers can go to hell. A taxi from Maponya Mall to anywhere in Soweto could easily be anywhere between R15 and R20. You killed someone for R15??? Someone’s life was worth a R15 trip?? Nah, go jump off a cliff.”
@10SixGun expressed sorrow at the cruelty of the murder and the disregard for what the victim was trying to do for himself and his family, saying, “Taxi drivers are so cruel. Imagine your son, brother, husband/boyfriend or family member went to work to try and provide and this happens, iyo, I’m so broken.”
@Khanyi_Magubane decried the greed of the taxi industry and the taxi drivers’ tendency of harassing people in their vehicles when they think they are part of the e-hailing sector. She said, “I am horrified that the taxi industry would be so cruel, so greedy! This [is] not only the cruel burning of e-hailing cars with drivers burnt alive inside at Maponya Mall, it’s the terrorising of private car owners every morning as they to leave townships to go to work, the shabby conditions of taxis that continue to kill out people on the roads. Kwanele, enough!”
Despite the public outrage, SANTACO has not come out and commented on the situation, and it hasn’t condemned the act of violence which has led to the murder.