By Sue Maclennan
The Makhanda taxi industry says men who want to speak out against gender based violence are welcome to join them in an hour-long stoppage centred around the Border Alliance Taxi Association (BATA) rank in Beaufort Street on Thursday 28 April. Lungisa Sixaba, drivers’ convenor of the joint BATA/ Uncedo taxi forum, said taxis would convene in the area from 10am to 11am tomorrow.
The BATA taxi rank is metres from the Grahamstown Police Station and Sixaba said a delegation would be taking a petition to the station commander.
“We want the station commander to say how they are planning to deal with the crime in this town.”
Sixaba said they were concerned about increasing incidents of gender based violence, as well as the proliferation of drugs in the community. “Those drug dealers have now run away from the township and are now operating freely in town,” Sixaba said. “We need the police to be more visible.
“We as men in the taxi industry, we feel we must speak out. Enough is enough. The taxi industry is big, but we do not want to take the law into our own hands,” Sixaba said.
He said as a group that has contact with so much of the community regularly, it was important that people felt safe and were safe with them.
“Tomorrow, we will be wearing black. We will stop from 10am to 11am, but otherwise the day will be normal,” Sixaba said.
He said taxi association members had been delegated to monitor the situation in case criminals try to use the attention on that part of town as an opportunity.
“This is going to be a peaceful protest,” Sixaba said.
Sixaba is one of five councillors sworn into the Makana last week to replace five MCF PR councillors sworn in after the November 2021 local government election. However, he emphasised that tomorrow’s demonstration was not a political event.
“This is non political,” Sixaba said.
SmilingSouth 
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