Durban - Deputy mayor Philani Mavundla says the eThekwini Municipality is on the verge of striking a deal with taxi operators that will see the GO!Durban project finally taking off after years of delays.
Speaking of the negotiations in a recent council meeting, Mavundla said he believed there was finally “light at the end of the tunnel”.
The city has been embroiled in protracted and fraught negotiations with taxi operators whose livelihoods would be affected by the GO!Durban project that could obliterate part of their business.
One of the main contentious issues is who will own the buses that will operate these routes.
The Mercury has previously reported that the taxi operators want control, while the city, which will buy the buses, also wants control of them.
The operators have argued that they are the ones losing their livelihoods, and as such should have control of the buses.
There have also been concerns that the infrastructure on the C3 route going from Pinetown towards KwaMashu, which is complete and was set to go live last year, is starting to fall into a state of disrepair without ever having been used for its intended purpose.
Mavundla put his head on the block, saying the city would reach an agreement with the taxi operators.
This was after an impassioned statement from DA councillor Thabani Mthethwa, who called on the city to take control of the process, saying the city and its residents could not be held to ransom by “stakeholders”.
“The one thing that was at the top of our priorities was the issue of GO!Durban, which we have been engaging to try and find common ground with the (taxi) industry.
“We are at the point now where we can see light at the end of the tunnel,” said Mavundla, who was describing matters that the human settlements and infrastructure committee was dealing with. Mavundla chairs the committee.
“All I can report to this council is that we seem to have reached where we wanted to get.
“If the councillor can bear with us, if the city has failed for the past nine years, some of us were not here, (but) in the past seven months we have done a lot to conclude this particular issue. We can’t be emotional about it, it will not help anyone.
“Let’s get this to a conclusion, and it will be concluded this time around,” said Mavundla.
Mthethwa said the city should stop treating stakeholders, that were delaying the implementation of the project, with kid gloves.
“We have been discussing GO!Durban for just over nine years now, and to date we don’t have buses on the road. We are told we are losing grants because we don’t have buses on the road. While we believe that community participation and engaging stakeholders as a city is important, we believe as the DA that we (city) have overcommitted ourselves.
“We over-negotiated, and it got to the point that the so-called stakeholders seem to believe they own this project. I must remind you, colleagues, this project belongs to the people of eThekwini, especially the poor who urgently need this service.
“It cannot be that the people of eThekwini and this council are held to ransom by business people who seem to think that this whole project, funded by the monies and the ratepayers of eThekwini, belongs to them,” said Mthethwa.
He said the city needed to play hardball to move the project to its conclusion.
“It’s either they accept what we offer them as the city, or they get nothing. Our position is that if they do not accept the percentage offered to them, we must take control of 100% of the fleet ownership and make sure that these buses are on the road. And make sure we don’t lose any grants that we seem to be losing at the moment just because we don't have buses on the road. It’s up to them. Let’s throw the ball in their court,” he said.
Mathula Mkhize of the South African National Taxi Council in the Durban West region said Mavundla had met with some operators in the industry and would be meeting with members from the Durban West region in the coming week.
Responding to the bus ownership issue raised by Mthethwa, Mkhize said: “We should campaign and become councillors, too, because we would be left with nothing. There is no expropriation agenda here, this is a business, not land,” he said.