It is more than a year later and no arrests have yet been made in the alleged assault of a Centurion woman by a taxi driver for giving her friend a lift.
Lesley-Anne Swanepoel (50) was punched in the face and suffered a fractured cheekbone when she was attacked by an enraged taxi driver who accused her of stealing his business in November 2016.
The incident happened while she was on her usual route on her way to work in Johannesburg.
She saw a friend standing on the corner of Panorama and Drakensberg roads.
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“I stopped to let her in the car. Friends standing with her also got into my car and I did not have a problem with this,” said Swanepoel.
She said a taxi driver of a brown taxi started shouting and screaming at her on the R55 on Drakensberg Road and followed her when she pulled away.
“Another taxi, a white Quantum passed me and made a U-turn and drove right at me and blocked me while the brown taxi trapped me.”
Swanepoel said this was when the driver of the brown taxi came in a rage at her.
He slapped her windscreen with his open hand in his fury and punched her in the face.
“I felt blood running from my face. All the other women in the car were petrified.”
Swanepoel said she escaped by taking a gap that had opened up in the traffic.
She was traumatised by her ordeal and had to see a therapist to deal with the incident.
Swanepoel told Rekord recently neither the police nor the SA national taxi Council (Santaco) was willing to help.
“I made numerous phone calls and Santaco told me I am lying,” she said.
“To this day, no arrests have been made.”
Swanepoel is adamant in seeing justice prevail.
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“Despite initiatives launched by government departments for crimes committed against women and children, our police and courts are failing us,” she said.
Her husband Chris, who was in the hospital at the time of the assault, was up in arms over what happened to his wife.
“I do not know what I would have done, but nobody treats my wife like that,” he said.
He described the taxi driver as a bully, who had no respect for women.
“I will leave no stone unturned before justice has been served,” he said.
“I was not trying to steal business from them. I only gave my friend and her friends a lift,” said Swanepoel.
Swanepoel laid a charge at the Randburg police station, but the matter was transferred to the Wierdabrug police station.
Both the police and taxi association could not be reached for comment at the time of going to press.
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