Siphe Mxotwa , Khayelitsha
My worry is the national response to this ongoing violence and loss of life in the Western Cape. It’s as if it’s not of interest to them.
We are one of the economic hubs in the country and second to Gauteng. Our people here aren’t going to be losing their lives but their jobs too because the most affected lives in this ongoing taxi war are the people in the townships and not the CBD or suburbs.
These careless shootings took place in our areas more than anywhere else.
To play politics on the subject matter: what happened in KZN and Gauteng was happening in our townships but the dynamics are different.
It was white businesses being vandalised and burnt by our people. That’s why they decided to deploy the army to quell any further looting and arson.
In the Western Cape and Cape Town in particular the opposition party is the ruling party not the national ruling ANC. Maybe that’s why national government hasn’t made that call to bring the army to stop these senseless killings and I know they did deploy them for the gangsters on the Cape Flats but this taxi war thing has been going on for two weeks now and now they are attacking buses and they are killing drivers and passengers and how many should die before they intervene?
I’m racialising it because its black business that is in this mess and black lives are only affected by these hooligans fighting.
It’s either they are playing party politics, toying with people’s lives or they just don’t care. Or their lack of response is the deliberate attempt to stifle our economy down here as the conspiracy theorists would like us to believe – even though that will be a naive response and an own goal.
All of this nonsense will cripple our national economy further and that will not be a good thing for our country. The question remains: how many people innocent people, in particular, must die?