Taxi strike: We’re at the crossroads

10 August 2023

The DA strongly condemns the violent taxi strike action in Cape Town and in the province.

The crisis is nothing less than a watershed moment in our democracy.

The politicians who know for certain that they and their parties have absolutely no chance of replicating DA good governance, and no chance of convincing voters that they have ability and willingness to continue what the DA delivers consistently, have now turned to typical defeatist behaviour: causing chaos; political instability; tantrums.

ANC Minister of Police Bheki Cele attends a meeting with the taxi industry. A violent strike follows immediately. All the usual suspects are on the bandwagon – numerous RET factions, the EFF, political has-beens, and politicians continuously biting in the dust of DA progress. And then, to crown the outrageous behaviour, ANC Minister of Transport Sindisiwe Chikunga sides with those who willfully break the very law she is charged to uphold!

The ANC, incredibly yet expectedly, is banking on political mileage from the chaos – irrefutable evidence yet again that the ANC will harm any and all in its desperate attempt to trample to power. The people of the Western Cape know that their suffering is at the hands of the ANC, delivering cheap politics rather than desperately needed benefits. And the ANC knows that they will be punished for their self-serving attitude by voters who have grown wise to ANC falsehoods. The ANC also read the polls, and they tremble with fear of their looming losses in our province as well as at a national level.

Our people cannot go to work. Our children cannot go to school. Our people cannot buy food for empty shelves caused by absent labour. Our shopkeepers cannot trade. Our economy, our very livelihood, is under threat. Thank those who know they have no ways and means to rise to DA good governance, and therefore can do no more, and can stoop no lower, than sabotage and subversion and insurrection and treason.

The DA will not allow the people of the Western Cape, and the Provincial Government and the City of Cape Town, to be held hostage by wreckers and wasters, by ruiners and ravagers, by vandals inciting chaos and destruction. When the Rule of Law is attacked, democracy is rocked. The DA will defend the Rule of Law, will defend democracy with all it has. The DA will protect the freedom South Africans had won with blood and persistence and principle against every attack by those who claim to have provided freedom and continue to refuse to empower the free to live lives of freedom without fear and poverty.

In deference to one of history’s greatest bellwethers, our conscience is captive to the Rule of Law. Therefore, we cannot and will not stand down, because acting against one's conscience is neither safe nor sound. Here we stand; we can do no other.

Issued by Tertuis Simmers, DA provincial leader: Western Cape, 10 August 2023