The planned taxi protest scheduled for July 27 has been suspended following discussions between Gauteng’s taxi industry and the provincial Department of Roads and Transport.

The decision was taken after Gauteng MEC for Roads and Transport Kedibone Diale-Tlabela met representatives of the Gauteng taxi industry, including Santaco and the National Taxi Alliance (NTA), at the department’s headquarters in Koedoespoort in Pretoria on July 23.

The meeting formed part of a series of engagements led by the MEC to address key issues affecting the minibus taxi industry across the province. These include operating licences, compliance, and efforts to build a safe, professional, and sustainable public transport system.

The meeting also followed a request by the taxi industry to discuss a range of matters with the MEC after calling for a protest and shutdown of the industry on July 20.

Addressing more than 50 representatives, Diale-Tlabela said the industry plays a critical role in the lives of commuters and that improving its operations remains a priority.

“This is a dangerous industry, and you do not play around with people’s lives. I do not regret spending much time with role players to hear from the ground level how our modernising of the industry at present is affecting members of associations,” she said.

She warned that those involved in criminal activities would not be accommodated.

“Those who are doing dangerous things in the industry and are connected to acts of thuggery and killings are not meeting with me, but I know who they are,” said Diale-Tlabela.

“I promised the Minister of Transport I will work with her to de-risk the industry, and that is what we are doing.”

She said the engagements are aimed at introducing change in the Gauteng taxi industry while developing a sustainable model for the future.

“My focus is also to be able to say we have addressed the problems I began my tenure as MEC with, like the operating licences,” she said.

A major focus of the discussions was the long-standing backlog in operating licences.

According to Diale-Tlabela, the backlog dates back to 2009 and originally exceeded 58 000 applications.

She explained that clearing the backlog requires officials to verify every licence holder because many licences were issued to what she described as ‘ghost’ licence holders.

These include people who have died, no longer live in Gauteng or are no longer involved as taxi owners.

Diale-Tlabela said progress is being made in reducing the backlog.

She said the licensing process and administration have become faster, where one licensing office had about 400 applications four weeks ago, compared with around 200 applications now.

She explained that she has chosen to hand over operating licences personally to ensure they reach the rightful applicants.

Each successful applicant is required to collect the licence personally during organised handover ceremonies.

“I need to finish this job of unearthing ghost members of the industry. People ask me why, and I say you do not expect me to hand a bank card over to someone else if it is your card. Why should I do it with a licence that a breadwinner will be supporting his family with?”

She added that associations themselves sometimes discover that individuals claiming membership are in fact not registered members.

“We must stop this business of illegally issuing operator licences because there are people who are rightfully entitled to the licences but they are being held back. It is not fair,” she said.

Diale-Tlabela referred to one taxi association that had more than 4 865 members listed on its records, but ultimately only 564 legitimate members were identified.

She said many of the outstanding licence applications are linked to these so-called ghost members and stressed that cleaning up membership records is essential before broader reforms can be implemented.

“The backlog is thus made up of applications by these ghost members and we need to be able to identify those. This is why we need to change our approach because with cleaning up the data of the societies and associations we can start with implementing change,” she said.

The MEC also addressed ongoing concerns about taxi violence.

She said any information she receives that could be valuable to national intelligence structures would be shared with them.

“We have to stop the killing and the narrative around the killing,” said Diale-Tlabela.

As part of plans to modernise the industry, she said technology will play a greater role in future operations. An application for the taxi industry will be developed in co-operation with stakeholders, including the CSIR.

Diale-Tlabela rejected suggestions that relations between government and the taxi industry had broken down.

“We just need to get the evidence and scientific data so we can fix it. The taxi industry is our partners in this,” she said.

Following the meeting, NTA chairperson Mpho Motsepe confirmed that the planned protest would be suspended.

“We respect the MEC. It is a male-dominated industry and in this setting we respect her. All we need is to improve our industry to be better off. We agree with suspending the protest,” said Motsepe.

He said the industry supports technological improvements but wants government to work alongside operators during implementation.

“It is not that we do not want apps but we want government to sit at the table with us and see the importance of including us going towards the 5th Industrial Revolution.

To the public, we say it is business as usual. We are open to initiatives that will improve us. We are not bullies. We are the people who are saying: ‘We do not want the industry to die because we employ 700 000’, he said.

Click here to listen to Kedibone Diale-Tlabela:

Taxi bosses and MEC calls 27 July taxi protest off.
Video: Elize Parker.
Read here: https://t.co/XyglpBOVX5 pic.twitter.com/f4vFuclwC2

— Pretoria Rekord (@RekordNewspaper) July 24, 2026

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